🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5h6ca5$9sh$1@aggedor.rmit.edu.au>,
Craig Macbride <craig@rmit.edu.au> wrote:
>d-moss@adfa.oz.au (David Moss) writes:
>
>>At 1:05am local time the Australian Senate passed Kevin Andrews'
>>private members Bill, the Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996, by 38 votes to
>>33.
>
>Something like 70% of Australians favour euthanasia and yet only 46%
>of our elected representatives vote the way the people they supposedly
>represent want them to. Shows what utter shitheads we have in power.

Well, at least some _acknowleged_ this:



[Compiled from morning & afternoon TV news services]

25 Mar 97 Canberra. After one of the longest Senate debates on record
the Fed govt will overturn the NT's world-first voluntary euthanasia
law after the Senate passed an anti-euthanasia Bill by a narrow margin
of 5 votes this morning.  

In the 38-33 conscience vote, the Senate passed Lib backbencher Kevin
Andrews' Private Member's Bill that will effectively overturn the NT
Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, and prevent further action
surrounding another euthanasia Bill being formulated in the ACT.

Meanwhile, pro-euthanasia Dr Philip Nitschke burned copies of the Bill
and the NT's Self-Government Act in front of the Parl House in CBR
this morning. Dr Nitschke said he was proud to be a territorian, but
ashamed to be an Australian today. He was particularly critical of the
failure by the Senate to make provision for 2 people who have
completed the legal provisions of the Right to Die Act and were each
waiting for the right time to take advantage of the Act.  
Dr Nitschke said those patients and others must now re-enter the 
"shadowy world" of illegal assisted suicide.  

Dem leader Cheryl Kernot told reporters she would now be able to "remind" 
the Senate of their decision over assisted suicide, every time the issue 
of "State's rights" is brought up in future.  

In other news, Victorian surgeons have urged the Vic govt to formulate
State legislation to enable assisted suicide. Such a law wouldn't be
subject to over-riding by the Federal Senate. It's understood Vic Prem
Jeff Kennett is sympathetic to voluntary euthanasia.


25 Mar 97 Canberra. PM John Howard says he voted to override the NT's
voluntary euthanasia laws to prevent Australia descending what he
called "a slippery slope".  Mr Howard told Adel radio 5DN that he
                             ======================================
knows his views are probably in the minority, but he voted according
=====================================================================
to his conscience.  He said he's only "just" against euthanasia.  Mr
=================================================================
Howard said he was influenced by the "slippery slope" view -- that
once you legally sanction an act to terminate a life "the character of
society is altered and you wonder what the next step is".

-- 
R. Kym Horsell
KHorsell@EE.Latrobe.EDU.AU              kym@CS.Binghamton.EDU 
http://WWW.EE.LaTrobe.EDU.AU/~khorsell  http://CS.Binghamton.EDU/~kym