Damned if I Do (17 page)

We attended this new hearing in Sydney the ­following month. Although we were lucky to be represented by the wonderful folk at the
Public Interest Advocacy Centre, we were not optimistic. Other parties present included the
New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties, along with author and activist
Frank Moorhouse. Right to Life was represented by its own lawyers, and lawyers from the Attorney-General's
department were there in force. No one was surprised when the review decision went against us: the
Handbook
's pre­vious R18 classification was overturned and replaced by an RC rating (refused classification). This meant our book would be
banned—the first Australian book to be banned in
this ­country in thirty-five years! Interestingly, the Attorney-General's department gave evidence ‘in camera', so we never heard what they had to say. Even though our barrister,
Simeon Beckett, complained, suggesting a lack of natural ­justice, his laments fell on deaf ears.

If
Philip Ruddock suspected that Exit lacked the funds needed to take the matter further in the Federal Court, he was right. It was too big a risk in that political climate. Instead, as authors and publishers, we were forced to run around, collecting the books from Australian bookshop shelves so they could be destroyed. The Managing Director of the
Australian Christian Lobby,
Jim Wallace, issued a press release at the time congratulating
Right to Life on its ‘win in having Nitschke's book banned'. While it may have been clear who was driving the government's agenda, what was more alarming was its willingness to comply.

In March 2007 we held a public bonfire in front of old Parliament House in Canberra, as part of our
Day of Shame activities. We burnt hundreds of copies of the book. It seemed a fitting time for such a barbarous act. The Day of Shame wasn't a celebration either. It was a two-day event held by Exit to mark the tenth anniversary of the overturning of the
ROTI Act by the Kevin Andrews Act. Among the events were a march through Canberra and a dinner at the National Museum that was hosted by
Phillip Adams. At Parliament House, Exit members presented politicians from the Greens, Democrats and Labor parties with twenty-five
‘Condolence Books'. These books contained messages from thousands of voluntary euthanasia supporters all over Australia, calling on Parliament to rescind the
Andrews Act. The ABC's
Four Corners
covered the Day of Shame protest in a program called ‘
Final Call'.
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Burning the books was something from the Dark Ages, especially since the
Handbook
at this stage was selling freely and openly in almost all other western countries.

The reasons given for banning the book were ­laughable. Chief among them was the allegation that the
Handbook
‘instructs in matters of crime'; that is, it tells you how you might synthesise end-of-life drugs. At the hearings, we had pointed out that
Vogel's Textbook of Practical Organic Chemistry
does exactly the same thing. Indeed, that is where much of our knowledge had come from. The board's reply was terse. Our book was different because it explained the process in ‘accessible language‘. They were saying, in effect, that it is all right for a student of organic chemistry to synthesise barbiturates, but it's not all right to describe it in simple language that everyone else can understand.

Political interference such as the Minister's decision to appeal the judgment of the Office of Film and Literature Classification showed once again the power certain pressure groups have to corrupt the legitimate processes of civil ­society. Many of us found Minister
Ruddock's actions disgusting, as he allowed ideology and personal prejudice to influence the due process of an ‘independent' government body.

Around the same time, a similar battle opened up over the Tasman. As we planned a New Zealand book launch and workshop tour, the
Society for the Protection of Community Standards mobilised, lobbying the New Zealand Government. They urged that our now-banned Australian book be kept from their shores. Here, though, we had a partial victory. The newly appointed Chief Censor of New Zealand,
Bill Hastings, resisted. After some months of deliberation, a compromise was reached. If we would remove (or black-out) around thirty offending paragraphs, the book would be cleared for
New Zealand publication. This was unexpected, and even felt like a win. One of my clear memories of that time was meeting Bill in his office, high above Wellington, to receive the decision. Bill was keen for his staff to take a photograph of the two of us to record the event. I was pleased to agree.

By the beginning of 2007, I felt jaded by the whole
Peaceful Pill Handbook
censorship affair. It seemed every move we made, the government would make a counter-move, in a David and Goliath battle. It was becoming clear; we needed to use the internet and publish in an overseas jurisdiction—out of reach of the long arm of the persecutory Australian authorities. Via Exit's US publishing company, the online
Peaceful Pill eHandbook
was launched in London in October 2008. This was not simply the print-format book taken online. After searching the world for innovative methods of publishing, we settled on a British company, Yudu, who marketed a publishing platform that included videos and audio, as well as text, making the book a multi-media experience. The online format also allows hyperlinks to other websites, so a huge amount of information and related background detail is available. Because republication is at the click of a button, revised and upgraded information can be made available on an ongoing basis, while inaccurate or obsolete content is discarded. As the
eHandbook
is published in the US, it is not subject to Australian law, although this does make me wonder about the efficacy of Australia's
Suicide-Related Material Offences Act
.

Finally, in 2008, we felt that we were on the front foot and that the battle had been won. But then the government opened up a new front. Within a month of the online
eHandbook
's release, the Labor Minister for Communications, Senator
Stephen Conroy, announced a proposal for
mandatory internet filtering by Internet Service Providers, a so-called ‘clean feed'. While the original idea for such a filter had come from
Kim Beazley when he was Labor Opposition Leader, its claimed objectives were the same—to protect the nation's children from
child pornography.

In the period leading up to the proposed legislation, the government compiled a
secret blacklist of over a thousand websites that would be banned once the law was passed and suitable filtering technology implemented. While I had my suspicions, it wasn't until
WikiLeaks published the blacklist in March 2009 that I discovered that
The Peaceful Pill eHandbook
website (
www.peacefulpill.com
) was included. This was the only voluntary euthanasia site to be targeted. (Interestingly, as soon as WikiLeaks published the government's secret list, it found itself added to the same blacklist.) At this point, it became clear that the blacklist was also about more than just
child pornography, or even porn in general. The government had another agenda. The blacklist allowed the Minister to use his discretion to ban almost any website he wanted, and there would be no system of appeal. I was left wondering if anyone cared that Australia was heading down the same censorship route as the dictatorships and theocracies of such countries as North Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and China.

Throughout 2009 and 2010 the question of the mandatory filter and the blacklist was increasingly discussed in the media, and at public debates and forums. In
The
Sydney Morning Herald
, conservative commentator
Michael Duffy (himself a voluntary euthanasia supporter) wrote a column titled ‘Web fil­tering pulls plug on euthanasia debate'.
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Speaking about his article at a Politics in the Pub night in Sydney soon after, Duffy asked rhetorically ‘What do these three sites have in common:
www.pantyass.com
,
www.peacefulpill.com
and ­
www.pickyourperversion.com
?' Of course,
these are sequential ‘P' listings from the websites
Senator Conroy was planning to ban. There was my book, sandwiched between the porn and titillation.

But there is often a light side to such darkness; there has to be. During the 2010 National Science Festival in Canberra,
Fiona and I were invited by
Erica Ryan, the Manager of Collections at the
National Library, to visit the ­underground storage vaults. I jumped at the chance, as this secure area is where the nation's banned books and other ‘dangerous' printed materials are housed. The vaults are in the basement, behind
thick steel doors and under lock and key—a maximum-security prison for books. With lock after lock finally opened, we were shown my little book, wedged in between titles such as
Busty Broads
and
Tales of Tom Thumb
. With a mischievous look, Erica took the book from the shelf and suggested we might like to autograph the copy. Fiona marked the occasion with a photograph. I had to laugh. The only other place
The Peaceful Pill Handbook
is
legally held in Australia is Parliament House Library in Canberra.

At a grassroots level, Exit responded to the threat of the clean feed by introducing our elderly members to concepts such as ‘virtual private networks' and ‘internet tunnels', which are technological means of getting around an internet filter. We placed our regular information workshop program on hold and hastily convened alternative ­meetings
that focused on ways to subvert government censorship. With
expertise from the twenty-something geeks of the
Pirate Party, we held hacking meetings on the east coast of Australia. It was wonderful to see our senior citizens arriving with laptops and wi-fi modems in hand, ready to learn how to keep their internet access free from government interference. After all, if their grandchildren could hack through their schools' firewalls, surely they could also learn such skills? ABC ­television's
Four Corners
program covered Exit's response to the government's censorship plans in a report by
Quentin McDermott titled: ‘
Access Denied'.
7

In 2010 the ongoing war on censorship recommenced when we attempted to air a pro-choice euthanasia television commercial. A billboard was planned to be unveiled not long after. While the commercial was
banned outright, the billboard did eventually go up on the Hume Highway, south of Sydney.

In July that year, the ABC's comedy program based around the ad industry,
The Gruen Transfer,
featured ‘compulsory euthanasia for the over 80s' as part of their Pitch segment. The Pitch is where two ad agencies each make a television commercial that seeks to sell the impossible. Among the more infamous pitches have been those selling child labour and the banning of all religion. Sydney agency
The Works, led by
Kevin Macmillan, won the euthanasia pitch with a delightful and innovative ad. At the time, Exit had come into a sizeable bequest. We contacted Kevin with a view to entering the advertising fray. Three months later, the ‘
Exit Choices' television commercial was completed.

The advertisement shows a man in his pyjamas ­sitting on the edge of his bed, talking about the choices he's made through his life: ‘Life's all about choices. Like I chose to go to uni and study engineering.' The ad ends with the man asking why he isn't allowed to decide to end his suffering from cancer, which, as he states, he ‘didn't choose to get'.
8
In Australia, all advertisements must be approved by the Commercials Advice process of a quasi-governmental body called ‘
Free TV Australia'. In the case of Exit's advertisement, approval was given, only to be suddenly withdrawn at the last moment.
9
No reason was provided. Free TV's counsel issued a statement saying that the commercial provided ‘a realistic depiction of methods of suicide' and was thereby ‘­invariably unsuitable' for television. Of course, this was rubbish. The commercial showed nothing more than a man in his ­pyjamas sitting on an unmade bed talking about the decisions he had made in his life. His wife is in the frame behind him, a mug of coffee in her hand. No discussion on ‘method', and no ‘depiction'. With no appeal process, it seemed our $25 000 investment had been wasted.

While the commercial never ran in the Channel 7 late-night spot we purchased (luckily, we got our money back),
The Gruen Transfer
took a keen interest in the issue. The
censorship of a commercial piqued their interest. In their last show for 2010, they had their panel critically ­examine the ­commercial on air. They then played it in its entirety. Thanks to
The Gruen Transfer
, the advertisement and the Exit ­message got out. What was particularly pleasing was that the ­commercial was seen by millions o
f
TV viewers (not to mention those who have since seen it on YouTube). This was advertising space we could never have afforded. Sometimes censorship has a silver lining.

The TV commercial was followed by a
billboard campaign. Inspired by the success of atheist groups in the UK who had created controversy by purchasing space on the side of double-decker buses for their secular mass media ­messages (‘There's ­probably no god, now stop worrying and enjoy your life'), our billboard plan was put into action. We kept the ­message simple, with no graphics and no images—­nothing ‘objectionable'. The message: ‘85% of Australians support Voluntary Euthenasia. Our Government doesn't. Make them Listen.' We took this ­statistic from the October 2009 Newspoll that had been ­published in
The Australian
, as we thought no one could argue with it.
10
How wrong we were.