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@ HebrideanUltraTerfHecate
2025-05-08 11:53:15
https://thecritic.co.uk/no-assisted-dying-in-australia-isnt-safe/
For a decision to be truly voluntary, it also needs to be fully informed by well qualified practitioners. Yet the Australian regimes fail that test as well. In Victoria, for example, there is no requirement for either of the assessing doctors to be a specialist in the patient’s condition, or for either doctor to have any particular level of knowledge about palliative care.
In fact, it is possible in Victoria for a patient to be assessed simply by two GPs, only one of whom has had any prior experience of patients with similar conditions, and there is nothing in the legislation to stop the two GPs being in the same clinic or other practice.
For a regime to be safe also requires thorough and impartial oversight. However, this is yet another failure of the Australian regimes; perhaps the most serious failure of all.
Approval permits for an assisted suicide in Victoria are issued by civil servants and almost exclusively on the submitted paperwork alone, with virtually no investigation. There are, moreover, no audits of actual compliance, no random case reviews and no requirements to report adverse events.
To make matters worse, the Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board is not an impartial and objective regulator. Instead, most of its members are strongly committed to VAD and thus have a strong interest in ensuring that any problems are not made public.