Professor Ben White:

I see the issue the Senator is grappling with. The final output of the law will depend on and be shaped by how those values are balanced. For example, if there were to be an unfettered commitment to autonomy, then there may be a willingness to allow for assisted dying if people want it, regardless of whether they are terminally ill or not. In terms of the process, my colleague, Professor Lindy Willmott, and I wrote a book chapter where we tried to articulate what those values were. These included, for example, the balancing of autonomy against life and the need to safeguard the vulnerable. All these values together led us to suggest a model, for example, limited to people who were terminally ill and going to die in any event.

In terms of the Australian experience, each of the voluntary assisted laws has some of those principles included in the legislation as part of guiding how the overall legislation works. The final decision about who is able to get access to voluntary dying, however, is specified very clearly in those eligibility criteria. That steps beyond those broader principles. Each of the six state laws specify, extremely specifically, the eligibility criteria in Australia. As mentioned before, these are quite narrow. We are talking about competent adults who have decision-making capacity and who have an advanced and progressive illness. Some states also require it to be incurable.

Critically, the adults are expected to die within six or 12 months, depending on the state or illness. That balancing exercise by each of the parliaments and parliamentary committees just like this one led to a model that drew those eligibility criteria in the way I mentioned.