Damned if I Do (9 page)

In 2000, Norma was terminally ill with lung cancer and wanting to die. After failing to get the palliative-care ­doctors to agree to what amounted to slow euthanasia (terminal sedation), for which she had my support, she stopped eating and drinking. She then ingested the entire contents of a bottle of liquid morphine that had been prescribed for her. My journalist friend at the ABC,
Murray McLaughlin, then working for
7.30 Report
, had followed Norma's case closely, and had filmed her handing an open letter, declaring her intention, to
Peter Baume, a former Federal Health Minister.

Murray considered he had the right to be kept fully informed of the progress of the case, but I found myself lying to him about exactly when Norma died. Her death was not easy. The liquid morphine she drank did not kill her immediately, and it took many hours for her to die. If the news of her death had got out on the Friday it occurred, it would have dominated the media over the weekend, to her children's distress. There was also the matter of the law and my exact role in her death. My own actions are often under the police spotlight, a worry that few journalists have.

My lie to Murray meant that it was Monday before the story broke. He felt betrayed. Our friendship cooled and has only recently come anywhere near recovering. I didn't regret what I'd done but, to this day, I feel conflicted about giving the media what they want while trying to consider the ­feelings and emotions of those close at hand, of those good people whose lives and deaths are playing out.

The documents relating to
Bob Dent's case—the death certificate and the certificates signed by the three doctors—were lodged with the coroner on the Wednesday, which was when everything became public. So, I bought forty-eight hours by lying to
Kerry O'Brien, and others. I was gutted and close to tears at the press conference after Bob's death. Nothing could have prepared me for the global ­publicity that followed. From that moment on, I was typecast—by my
supporters, as a determined advocate for the right to choose; by my opponents, as ‘
Dr Death'. Three more of my patients—Janet Mills,
Valerie Purcell and
Bill Worthington—all used the
Deliverance Machine over the following months to die peacefully, and at the time and place of their choosing.

Janet Mills' case presented a particular problem. She was from Naracoorte in South Australia, and was suffering from
mycosis fungoides, a rare skin cancer that breaks down the skin cells, leaving scarring, recurrent infection and constant, unendurable itching. This is the disease that killed
Paul
Eddington—Jim Hacker of the BBC's
Yes Minister
and
Yes, Prime Minister
television series. Janet, with her husband,
Dave—
a shearer and one of the nicest and strongest people you'd ever hope to meet—came to Darwin to take advantage of the law. Over the years, Janet had been given every available treatment and she'd had enough.

Janet was shockingly ill when I visited her at her motel in Darwin; the room smelled of what was effectively her festering body. She was admitted to
Darwin Private Hospital and given a palliative care bed, while I ran around trying again to get the necessary signatures organised for her. The problem was that we needed a Territory-registered specialist to sign the papers and confirm diagnosis, but I couldn't find one. An Adelaide dermatologist with the unforgettable name of
Jack Russell had testified to Janet's terminal condition, but that wouldn't do, as he was down south.

I organised a media conference for Janet and Dave to appeal for a Territory specialist to come forward and help them. Her courage in facing the world, in her wasted, disfigured condition, was extraordinary. The hospital wouldn't cooperate, so the press conference was held at
Bob Dent's house. But the appeal didn't work. No doctor put up their hand.

I became very despondent, and one night while sitting with Dave, having a few beers, I said I didn't think we were going to be able to do it. He wouldn't have it.

‘We've come all this way,' he said, ‘and she's so very sick. You can't give up now.'

Tristan even tried the doctors in her field of ­paediatrics, only to get short shrift with comments like, ‘What's ­
mycosis fungoides got to do with paediatrics?' I rang every ­specialist in the Territory; it didn't matter what their field was, they only had to be a specialist and undertake a normal consultation with the patient.
5
As I worked my way down the list of more than sixty names, I developed a sort of patter:

‘Hello, this is Philip Nitschke. I'm trying to find a ­specialist to see a patient of mine who's dying of mycosis fungoides and I need …'

The response was almost exactly the same every time. Something like, ‘Give me a break. I'm not a dermatologist.'

I'd say, ‘Thank you very much,' and ring off, then dial again. Eventually, I reached the orthopaedic specialists and started by ringing
Steve Baddeley, the sports-car-driving ­surgeon who had fixed my heel years earlier and later supervised my first intern term. I gave him my spiel and was about to hang up when he interrupted me.

‘I'll do it,' he said. ‘I'll see her.'

I could hardly believe my ears and kept on talking until his response sank in.

‘Did you hear me? I believe in what you're doing,' he said.

Dave cried when I told him. We bundled up Janet and took her to Steve Baddeley's rooms in the Darwin CBD and he gave her a meticulous examination. He'd been in touch with the Adelaide dermatologist, and had researched the disease and Janet's condition.
He signed the papers. Ever since, Steve has copped flak over his actions from people who say he acted wrongly, that an orthopaedic specialist should not be signing the papers of a person dying from a dermatological condition. Those who criticised him have misread the Act; all the Act stipulated was that a ‘normal consultation' had to be conducted with a specialist. Adelaide dermatologist Dr
Warren Weightman, a right-to-life stalwart, compounded the confusion when he weighed in with his opinion that
mycosis fungoides wasn't even a terminal disease. To his great credit, Steve stood his ground and remains a strong
supporter of voluntary euthanasia.

Janet Mills had paid her dues. For years, when hospitalised, she'd made it possible for doctors and medical students to see her and learn about this dreadful condition. If anyone had earned the right to a peaceful death, she had. And she got it. She died in Dave's arms.

* * *

The question I am most commonly asked about when describing these events is, ‘How did you feel when you killed these patients?'

The answer has several aspects.
First, it was paramount I hold myself together. After the deaths, I was always in a mess, but saw no point in letting the patient's family see this. So, I managed to keep my composure, but it was always difficult. Knowing someone is going to die at a certain time puts you in a unique and very strange place. On those four occasions, travelling to meet with a patient who would die before I left, gave me a strange and uncomfortable feeling, similar I imagine to one that executioners must experience.

In
The Australian Book of Atheism
, which was published in 2011, I tried to describe the effect of these deaths on me. I wrote: ‘… each time, as I packed up the machine and walked back into the sunlight, it felt good to be alive and good to have done the right thing. And as for any possible breach of “god's law”? What god, and what law would that be?' But there was more to this than meets the eye.

When you are personally involved in the act of ­killing a person—even if it is what they want, and even if it is lawful—in my experience the action has a strange effect on you. In my case, it created a desperate need for something life-affirming. It was as though I needed to prove to myself that it was not me who had just passed on. It was not me who, in Jean Paul Sartre's words, had entered the existential nothingness, which is how an atheist like me sees the state of being deceased, of being dead. I'm in agreement with
Kerry Packer on this one: ‘let me tell you, son, there's fucking nothing there'. I've been with plenty of people when they have died, but it was the act of being instrumental in these peoples death that made these deaths so different.

So when these four patients died, my response was a desperate craving for intimacy. In retrospect I think I needed to feel a connection to those still living and to the world as a whole as it continued to turn. At the time I was having an affair with a local journalist in Darwin. She—we—came together in a manner not dissimilar to Bob Seger's ‘Nightmoves' song in which we both got what we wanted, using each other as we went. I can now fully understand where
David Walsh is heading with his
MONA Museum's Sex and Death theme. There is something primordial about the beginning and ending of life. I'm pleased that a replica of my
Deliverance Machine has found a spot to be exhibited within a context that asks important social, political and artistic questions of the two.

Apart from the four people who used the ROTI law to die, there was a fifth,
Esther Wild. Esther had been a nurse at Royal Darwin Hospital and was terminally ill with
carcinoid syndrome, a rare type of cancer. Esther qualified to make use of the law but was prevented from doing so for ­reasons that should shame the people involved, as I will explain later. Now though, even as these initial four people used the ROTI Act to put an end to their suffering, opponents of the Territory legislation were mustering force to move against me and every Australian citizen who believed in their right to voluntary euthanasia.

TEN

The overturn

There is nothing moral about our exercising a free conscience vote as members of parliament and then voting to deny to others the right to exercise their

conscience. What possible right do[es] Kevin Andrews ... have to have exercised Bob Dent's conscience for him?

Anthony Albanese, Australian House of Representatives,
Speech
,
Second Reading Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996

I
don't remember when I first heard the name
Kevin Andrews,
but it has been stuck in my mind ever since.

Kevin James Andrews is a pro-life lawyer from Gippsland, in country Victoria. A devout Catholic, he entered Parliament in 1991, and by 1995 was a backbencher in
John Howard's newly elected conservative
government. As one of the four founders of the
Lyons Forum, a secretive, ultra-conservative faction within the Liberal Party, Andrews is about as reactionary and doggedly religious as Australian politicians get. He is credited, if that's the word, with naming the group after that historical anachronism
Dame Enid Lyons. The forum was very influential under Howard, as it set itself to work against progressive moves in such areas as abortion, cloning and stem-cell research. Euthanasia was, obviously, a prime target.

In contrast to the former prime minister, Paul Keating, who had declared the ROTI Act ‘within power' and therefore not a matter for ‘disallowance' (overturning) or meddling by the federal government,
John Howard stated his opposition to ROTI less than four months after he was elected.
On 25 June 1996, he floated the idea of a Private Member's Bill to block the law. Two days later, Andrews stepped forward to do Howard's bidding, announcing that he would introduce precisely such a Bill. Howard was said to have conspired with Andrews to introduce his
Private Member's Bill, indicating that the government would offer support if the matter came before the High Court.

When word of Andrews' manoeuvrings reached me in Darwin, I feared the worst. I knew the
Howard ­government's agenda was solidly right wing—Howard had proudly declared himself the most conservative Liberal Party leader since Menzies—and I was very aware that the Federal Parliament was awash with the religious, on both sides of the chamber. The then opposition leader,
Kim Beazley, joined Howard in making his opposition to voluntary euthanasia clear early on.

In 1996, with ROTI in force but under attack, I was fighting on multiple fronts—trying to helping patients meet the requirements of the legislation and trying to organise support to defend the law itself. I was living a rather fragile hand-to-mouth existence, bulk-billing some of the patients who were still on my books, and being stretched thin financially.

I took it upon myself to try to organise a national defence of the ROTI Act—collective action.
Several states had state voluntary euthanasia societies and I hoped to focus them on this cause. I travelled around the country to meet representatives of these groups and managed to set up a strategy meeting to bring these miniature fiefdoms together.

I was dismayed when I found that there was no great enthusiasm for a collective stance. The
Voluntary Euthanasia Society o
f
Victoria was a standout. The president of this organisation, Dr
Rodney Syme, and the secretary,
Kay Koetsier, were taking a completely different, state-focused, tack. The Victorians would not support any campaign to lobby federal politicians, arguing that if the
Andrews Bill passed there would be a national outcry. They were adamant that at that point,
Jeff Kennett, the
Victorian Premier and an ardent states-righter, would pass voluntary euthanasia legislation and thumb his nose at the Federal Parliament. I thought this politically naïve and thought as Dale Kerrigan of
The Castle
would have said, ‘
Tell 'em they're dreamin'
.'

In allowing a free vote on Kevin Andrews'
Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996
,
John Howard knew he was on safe ground. Although a clear majority of ordinary Australians believed that a voluntary euthanasia law was desirable, the opponents were politically, financially and organisationally powerful, and had little opposition from a voluntary euthanasia movement that had failed to unite.

What became known as the
‘Euthanasia No' campaign was spearheaded by sub-committees and individuals with church backing. Its ringleaders included
Gillard ­government minister
Tony Burke, then a shadow cabinet member; wealthy investment banker
James Dominguez CBE AM, who has since been awarded the quaintly termed papal honour ‘Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great'; and
Paul Kelly, then editor-in-chief—now ‘editor-at-large'—of
The
Australian
newspaper. In his influential role as an issue-presenter and opinion-maker, Kelly was (and is) an unabashed opponent of end-of-life choice.

Although there were Liberals, like
Amanda Vanstone and
Petro Georgiou, who supported voluntary euthanasia, the majority on the government side were in the Andrews camp. Greens leader
Bob Brown and Labor members such as
Jenny Macklin,
Simon Crean and
Anthony Albanese
1
were outspoken defenders of ROTI, but many others in the Labor Opposition were very willing to see it overturned.

Although the
Northern Territory had the right to draft such a law, and set the conditions for the ROTI Act to be passed, the Territory Parliament had a crucial vulnerability. While it is an historical quirk, section 122 of the Australian Constitution
allows for the Federal Parliament to also make laws for the Territories of the nation (for example, the Northern Territory, the ACT and Norfolk Island). By definition, this same section allows the Federal Parliament to make a law preventing a Territory from making another law. That is what the
Andrews Bill set out to do.

People queuing to use ROTI—
Bob Dent, in ­particular—were acutely aware of this threat and often raised it with me. In September 1996, shortly before he died, Bob dictated a letter to be sent to the members of the Federal Parliament. He explained his condition and why he had decided to end his life. He continued, ‘I read with increasing horror newspaper stories of
Kevin Andrews's attempts to overturn the most compassionate piece of legislation in the world. (Actually, my wife has to read the newspaper stories to me because I can no longer focus my eyes.)' Then Bob hit the nail on the head. ‘If you don't want to use voluntary euthanasia, then don't do it, but don't deny me the right to use it if I want to.'

The politicking went on and I remember an ­amusing incident when it looked like the
Andrews Bill would reach the Senate. The Senate decided to send a committee of inquiry around the country, with a bunch of them ­turning up in Darwin to look into the question of whether the Federal Government should intervene to remove the Territory legislation. The hearings were convened, and the public invited to come in and put their views to the committee of assembled senators. The thing that stuck in my mind was this chap who had come in from the Victoria River region, and who looked like he'd been riding his horse for three days. He was ­bushman through and through, with his moleskins, Akubra hat and sun-wrinkled face. After he'd been sitting quietly up the back for a while, it was finally his turn to speak. He slowly got up and said, ‘I can't understand why youse senators are so keen to try and get rid of our Territory law on euthanasia. Because, from what I can see, most of us Territorians want this law.' He continued, ‘I think it's about eighty per cent of us Territorians who want this law and I think that oughta just about constitute a mandate! In fact, I think it's the sorta mandate that oughta give youse politicians an orgasm!'

Everybody started laughing.
Brian Harradine, the Catholic hardliner, seemed to wake up briefly. All the cowboy had done was state the obvious—if eighty per cent of people want something that does not infringe the rights of the other twenty per cent, why the hell would you be so keen to take it away from them?

In the campaigning, and prolonged and vigorous debate in both houses of Parliament, every conceivable argument for and against voluntary euthanasia was raised. The persistently irritating South Australian MP
Christopher Pyne (himself a practising Catholic) trotted out the church's line to the letter, citing Armageddon in the
Netherlands because of their euthanasia-decriminalisation experiment. The Dutch had decriminalised doctor-assisted suicide in 1993 and this allowed doctors who followed the guidelines to help a sick patient without being prosecuted, even though the act was still considered illegal
. Full legalisation of the practice did not occur in that country till 2002. At this stage though, rumours and myths about the dangerous practices going on in Holland were circulating, and Pyne trotted them all out as fact.
He ended his speech in Parliament with the rather ill-thought-out conclusion that the passing of the Andrews Bill would somehow save lives: ‘I cannot in all good conscience oppose a Bill that I know, if passed, will save the lives of Australian people.'
2

More disappointing, perhaps because it was unexpected, was the attitude of ALP heavyweight
Barry Jones, who said he was ‘singularly unimpressed by the argument that, [just] because public opinion polls support euthanasia, the Northern Territory's law should be allowed to stand'. Speaking in the ROTI Act's defence,
Bob Brown kept it simple, referring back to the words of
Wes Lanhupuy, the Northern Territory MP who had cast the winning vote for the original legis­lation, back in Darwin in 1995. The former member for Arnhem said:

After all the debate and controversy, I said to people that I hoped that they would be able to give me the right to exercise my right as an individual. It is not hard to ask for a person's rights as an individual. A man lives his life,
whether for or against the law, and irrespective of ­whether
he has received the rights that he has demanded or has had a cheerful life or otherwise. When he is about to make his last request, should we be in a position to deny him that last right which he wants? That is the question which I believe honourable members of this House will have to come to grips with by themselves …

Brown continued:

With no less charge, we in this Senate are challenged to give people that right, and not to deny it to them. We are charged to have the courage of the Northern Territory legislators. We are charged to respond to the undeniable force of public opinion in this country, and I charge all senators who have not yet made up their minds in this matter to think carefully about that preponderant public opinion—to give the people a say if you cannot make a decision against overriding this legislation, which will set the clock back decades in what is an inexorable move in the global community as well as here in Australia towards granting everybody the right to opt for voluntary euthanasia.

The
Andrews Bill was finally passed by a handful of votes in the Senate, and now only needed the Royal Assent of the governor-general to become law. At that point, I decided to take a leaf out of the Vietnam draft-resisters' book.

I had watched the debate on the television in Bob Brown's Parliament House office and saw that it was ­obvious the bill would pass. I mentioned to Natasha, one of Bob's legal researchers, that I thought it would make a good point to
burn copies of the
ROTI Act and the Northern Territory Constitution on the steps of Parliament House, and she organised photocopies from the parliamentary library. The ROTI Act only amounted to six pages, but the Territory Constitution was a thick stack of paper. You can't just drop a match on a bundle of paper like that on a cold windy Canberra night and expect it to burn; you need an accelerant.

‘We need some petrol,' I said, ‘but how do you get that in Parliament House?

She said, ‘Leave it to me.'

Because she had a staff pass and didn't have to go through the regular security, she was able to smuggle in a small screw-top petrol bottle. Handbags are marvellous things at times. When Bob Brown and I, and others, were ready to walk out to face the nation's media, I excused myself for a minute, took the papers into a toilet and soaked them in the petrol. Out on the steps, in front of the cameras, I lit a match and they went up in a sheet of flame. It made a dramatic newspaper photo.

* * *

The most immediate victim of the Andrews Bill was
Esther Wild. In my book
Killing Me Softly,
I wrote at length of Esther's terrible plight. Anyone interested in the intersection of morality and politics, and the hazards of ­providing slow euthanasia by morphine infusion, should read that account. What Esther had to endure is painful to recall. Here, I'd like simply to put on the record the cruelty of those ­politicians who resisted her wish to be allowed to die peacefully under the
ROTI Act. Esther had already qualified as someone who could use the law; she had her papers signed and was ready. However, she didn't want to die right away; an avid gardener, she wanted to see the flowers in her large tropical garden bloom one more time. In qualifying to use the law, she had her insurance policy of choice in place. Or so she thought.

Once the
Andrews Bill passed the Senate, the timing of Esther's death came down to the governor-general,
Sir William Deane. She knew she would need to act before the ROTI law was lost, and decided on the Easter holiday period as her time to die. However, Deane would have none of it, taking the extraordinary step of giving assent to the Andrews legislation late on the Thursday afternoon before Good Friday. In doing so, he ignored a personal plea from Esther to wait at least until after the Easter public holiday.

Deane's reputation is forever tarnished—in my estimation
—by his actions, and that he then delegated to his press secretary the job of telling Esther of his decision, behaviour I felt was nothing short of pathetic.