Professor Roderick MacLeod:

The Senator's points about public perception are very well made. Before New Zealand changed the law, as the committee probably knows, we had a referendum. People were asked whether they were in favour of euthanasia and assisted dying and a majority said "Yes". However, when people researched what they understood to be assisted dying and euthanasia, it was clear the majority had no idea. They thought that having morphine for pain relief or withdrawing ventilatory support was assisted dying, as well as a whole raft of other things. When people were made more aware of what assisted dying really was, the numbers in support of it came down, although that was not enough to change the way the people voted. They voted in a majority to change the law, but even some of the law makers I spoke to did not really understand the implications of what they were voting on, of what the rather thin safeguards, as I see it, in our legislation mean. Assisting medical practitioners are trained in detecting coercion and yet, when one speaks to geriatricians who have a lifetime of experience with family members coercing their patients, they find it very difficult. I do not think it is as simple as saying that practitioners have had some training so they know how to detect coercion and how to test capacity. Testing capacity is an astonishingly difficult thing to do. The courts are filled with families who are suggesting their loved ones did not have capacity when they wrote their will, for example, and that is very difficult to challenge.

I am just glad I do not have the committee's job of trying to create a law which is safe. I hear what Professor White says about the safety aspects, but I do not believe, from what I have read, that any jurisdiction has created legislation that is truly safe or that cannot be got around by one way or another.