Dr. Greg Mewett:

I think that is not peculiar to palliative care doctors. I have heard Senator Mullen talking about the runaway train and the slippery slope. That is a common argument that is raised in this space by a whole range of people, whether they are in medicine, philosophy, ethics or whatever. That is a whole different ball game. The law has been in place for four and a half years now in Victoria. I am not an expert on the Canadian or Dutch systems. All I know is that autonomy, as Senator Mullen describes it, is a relative concept. Most people are not islands unto themselves, as John Dunne once said in a pub, but they are making decisions in the context of their own families, their own situations and their own social groups. That does not mean that autonomy is not important. We already give people a lot of autonomy in palliative care. We like them to choose where they would like to die. We like them to choose whether they want to continue with further chemotherapy for their cancer. We like them to be able to decide whether they wish to stop their non-invasive ventilation for motor neurone disease. Yes, autonomy is not just one person making their own decision. It is autonomous within their own family, societal group and community. It is important, in modern day social ethics, that people have an autonomous view. I believe that voluntary assisted dying is but one autonomous view that people may make, often in conjunction with their own families, friends and loved ones.