X-Message-Number: 7077
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 12:21:46 -0700
From: David Brandt-Erichsen <>
Subject: Australia update

     From the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
     Oct 26/96

     Chosen few may die in NT plan

     By MARGO KINGSTON and GAY ALCORN

     The Northern Territory Government has offered to amend its
     pro-euthanasia law to ban non-Territory residents from using it,
     in a last-ditch bid to persuade the Prime Minister to abandon
     attempts to render the law invalid through Federal intervention.

     Amid frantic last-minute manoeuvring within the Liberal Party to
     defer debate on the Federal anti-euthanasia bill, to begin on
     Monday, the NT Chief Minister, Mr Stone, said he would make the
     offer to Mr Howard next week.

     "One of the great arguments being used against us is that we have
     legislated for the whole of Australia," Mr Stone said.

     Under the plan, people would have to be Territory residents for a
     year before beginning the process of authorising a doctor to give
     them a lethal injection.

     Dr Philip Nitschke, who injected the first person to die under the
     NT's ground-breaking law, told the Herald that of his nine
     patients, seven were from interstate, including one now living in
     the Territory.

     He said it would be a "tragedy" if it was limited to locals,
     because it discriminated against people who were not born in the
     Territory.

     The NT Government has consistently said it was impossible to
     restrict euthanasia to local residents because of Section 117 of
     the Constitution, which says a resident of a State cannot be
     subject to any discrimination inapplicable in another State.

     But the Herald has learnt that legal advice to the NT Government
     in April was that the NT was not bound by the section, as it was
     not a State.

     The Territory has not made the offer until now because, as the
     advice stated, if the Territory wanted statehood by 2001, it would
     be wrong to make the law discriminatory against other Australians.

     Mr Stone said he would also urge Mr Howard to postpone debate
     until the High Court, which will hear a challenge to the NT law
     next month, decided whether it was valid.

     Under the bill, the NT, the ACT and Norfolk Island (but not the
     States) would be stripped of power to make laws allowing
     euthanasia, a move overwhelmingly opposed by last weekend's
     Federal Liberal Council as a breach of Territory rights.

     A Queensland Liberal backbencher, Mr Mal Brough, said yesterday
     that after the six speakers on the bill scheduled for Monday, he
     would ask the House of Representatives to send the issue off to a
     parliamentary committee.

     He told the Herald that like 30 per cent of members "I haven't
     made up my mind. We need a mature and informed approach because
     all we've had so far is many emotional responses."

     Mr Brough said Mr Howard gave him permission to make the move at a
     meeting last week.

     The Herald's Legal Correspondent, John Slee, writes: Doctors in
     the NT should not fear criminal prosecution if the Territory's new
     euthanasia law is struck down, according to the senior Sydney
     barrister Mr Tom Hughes, QC.

     Mr Hughes's opinion is that a doctor "will not be guilty of
     manslaughter or any other offence if, intending only to relieve
     pain, he or she administers a drug, knowing that the drug will not
     only relieve pain but may also hasten death".


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