I have been invested in the issue of Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) for a long time. In 1993, as a student at Sanderson High School, I completed my first research work – an Independent Research Report on the topic of ‘whether people in Darwin, think the practice of euthanasia, should be legalised in Australia, for people who are terminally ill?’ I concluded that the question needed to be confronted ASAP. So what happened?
In short, the following. In 1995, the NT passed Australia’s first ever VAD law, the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995. Four Territorians ended their lives using this law. The following year, a private members bill was introduced to Federal Parliament by backbencher Kevin Andrews, which passed as the Euthanasia Laws Act 1997. For twenty-five years, this law removed the power of territory parliaments to legalise euthanasia, until it was repealed by the Restoring Territory Rights Act 2022.
The ACT capitalised quickly, and by 2024, every Australian jurisdictions had a VAD law – except the NT. Instead, we commissioned an ALP-auspiced Independent Expert Report in 2024, and then a CLP-initiated Parliamentary Report in 2025. Finally, we are ready. And so, next week the NT legislature will debate a new Rights of the Terminally Ill (ROTI) Bill (2026), eponymously named in tribute to its predecessor.
I am proud to be a member of the government that is progressing this issue legislatively, decades after the disallowance of the original vanguard law championed by our longest-serving Chief Minister, Marshall Perron. Notwithstanding, there is a perverse irony in the fact that modern bill offers less rights to the terminally ill, than its namesake. Frankly, Territorians deserve a better VAD bill.
The Territory is different. So say all of us, when offered the opportunity. Geographically, demographically, economically, and socially. That difference requires consideration generally, and specifically vis-à-vis VAD. This is not a place with surplus to requirements labour or capital – we have significantly fewer medical facilities, healthcare workers, or specialist staff than we need to service our population or support sustainable growth. We will not realistically provide time-sensitive VAD services to Territorians too, if we impede access from the outset.
The new ROTI bill does precisely this, by introducing the outmoded impediment of a gag clause, and curtailing eligibility on prognosis, against the flow of national traffic. These insertions will in practice prevent our limited health workforce from information sharing with patients, and provide mechanisms for third parties to frustrate VAD choices by the terminally ill. Dying people will find out too little, too late. The measures are opposed by the AMA NT, COTA, and other credible stakeholders. Moreover, these impediments were rejected by our own Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee (LCAC) Report into VAD.
Over two decades every Australian jurisdiction has learned from the mistakes of others and moved towards a best practice ‘Australian VAD model’. Cumbersome though it may be to some, the model employs the right mix of checks and balances for Australians. The bipartisan LCAC Report, which I chaired, unanimously recognised and accepted this as the best path forward for Territorians too. It defies logic that the NT would move backwards to a decades-old standard.
History shows that VAD laws take years to be revisited. It’s important to get this right the first time. Territorians deserve liberal democratic freedoms to genuinely choose to participate in or abstain from VAD processes, free of paternalistic restrictions. Most importantly, terminally ill Territorians deserve freer access to information about VAD, and greater freedom to choose VAD when they are clearly dying and suffering. Three decades after high school, I still “hope that an equilibrium can be found, so those who want relief receive it, and those who don’t are not disturbed by it occurring.”