Around 500 Australians marched against a proposed assisted dying bill in the Queensland capital, Brisbane, on Saturday.
Doctors and nurses, as well as concerned families and individuals, rallied outside Queensland’s Parliament House against proposed assisted dying legislation.
Many chanted peacefully: “Kill the bill, not the patient.”
The Queensland government, led by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, is set to debate assisted dying legislation this week.
One speaker at the protest, Dr. Christian Rowan MP, highlighted the vital need for improved palliative care funding rather than death for patients, slamming the “appalling lack of palliative care funding in Queensland” in particular.
Earlier this year, a damning report by the Australian Catholic University’s PM Glynn Institute revealed that Australia has less than half of the recommended number of palliative care doctors needed to take care of dying and chronically ill patients, as SPUC reported on at the time.
Dr. Rowan also raised the concerns of doctors, including himself, about the ability and willingness of medical professionals to “sign off” on the deaths of their patients.
Recently, the Nurses’ Professional Association of Queensland (NPAQ), of around 8,000 nurses, came out against the proposed legislation, stating that, if passed, it would change their job description from “saving lives and doing no harm to taking lives”.
Mark Coleridge, the Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane, has also voiced his opposition against the bill in favour of “a ‘care first’ approach of high-quality palliative care for all Queenslanders”.
SPUC comment
A SPUC spokesperson said: “The push to legalise assisted, so-called ‘voluntary’, death in Queensland is part of a troubling trend across the globe that sees death as a default response to serious illness and even mental distress.
“Rather than turning to euthanasia, the Queensland government should care for its citizens and not expose them to dangerous legislation that, as SPUC has highlighted before, will lead to many vulnerable persons feeling pressured into taking their own lives.
“Death is not, and should not be, the answer to the challenges of care.”
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