Better Off Dead

20 years ago, four dying people were able to access the Northern Territory’s world-first law to help them die more mercifully, before the law itself was extinguished. By the end of 2016, over 100 million people on three continents will be able to access such laws – the most recent places to adopt them being America’s most populous state, California, and Canada. Since that Northern Territory law was overturned in 1997, nearly 30 attempts to create a new one here in Australia have failed. But as the tide of history turns in favour of assisted dying, how much longer can our politicians continue to ignore the call for change? Bob Hawke, left, and Heather Bell — Photo credits: Bob Hawke by Eva Rinaldi (CC-BY-SA); Heather Bell, supplied The old arguments that have held such sway – about the elderly and the vulnerable being unsafe under these laws – no longer hold. Over a decade of experience in Europe, and nearly two decades in America, have shown us that the safeguards do work: that good laws can be created to