“Many people with disability are concerned about euthanasia becoming a default option for people whose lives are made unbearable by poverty, unsuitable housing, healthcare, pain management and isolation,” says CRAIG WALLACE.  

WHILE many Canberrans celebrated the recent decision to remove the 25-year-old prohibition on the ACT’s right to make laws in relation to voluntary assisted dying, people with disabilities have mixed feelings about the outcome.  

On the one hand, most Canberrans acknowledge that the ACT is now a mature jurisdiction with its own functioning parliament and legislators. If anything, the deliberations and inquiry processes on London Circuit seem positively adult compared to the antics on the Hill.  

There are also people with disabilities who support euthanasia or who might want to access it.  

However, there are widely held concerns among many people with disability and advocates about euthanasia becoming a default option for people whose lives are made unbearable by poverty, unsuitable housing, healthcare, pain management and isolation.  

Some fear a repeat of the experience in Canada where Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) legislation was once reserved for individuals whose deaths were imminent. 

Since then, eligibility for MAID has been extended to people with incurable illness and disability alone. Canadians with disability report that governments will fund access to assisted dying, but not the incomes they need to survive. 

There are well publicised and sad examples of people seeking MAID because of social circumstances and a lack of healthcare including long waiting lists for elective surgery and lives made miserable by declining income support.  

We’re in Canberra, not Canada, but this is not too far away from where we sit in 2023. 

Many Canberrans with disabilities live in poverty because basic payments such as JobSeeker and Disability Support Pension (DSP) have been allowed to decline. Our DSP is not as bad as Ontario’s notorious disability payments scheme, but it’s not far off.  

Recent analysis from AFI shows that people with disability in Canberra face a shortfall of around $824 a fortnight after paying for bare necessities – rental housing, groceries, transport, utilities and other expenses.  

Governments are in the process of restricting access to pain medications and opioids that many people use to manage chronic pain – including Panadeine and Panadol.  

Day after day during covid, governments have shown the bargain-basement price they put on the lives of people with “underlying health conditions” and older people, writing off their deaths as the necessary price we pay for keeping cafes open.  

Time and again we are told social supports such as the NDIS are unsustainable – perhaps keeping those on it alive is unsustainable, too?  

Most imagine that euthanasia is about people with end-stage cancer rather than disability, but this misunderstands the smoothed path from disability into preventable chronic disease.  

In the real world many people with disability lack access to primary and preventative health care, testing and screening that would help them manage and prevent conditions such as cancer.  

The ACT Council of Social Service’s (ACTCOSS) powerful “Imagining Better” report on health access for people with disability painted a powerful, evidence-based picture of people with disability facing hurried, bulk-billed consultations, staff who don’t know how to communicate with them, misdiagnosis due to their disabilities and inaccessible infrastructure.

It’s an example of telling difficult truths to power – something I hope ACTCOSS and other organisations such as Advocacy for Inclusion (AFI) will always continue to do.  

On the ground, I hear and see people who can’t even be examined by their GP because they don’t have a height-adjustable examination table.  Blind people told us they couldn’t use the government-issued bowel cancer testing kits. Hard-of-hearing people tell us doctors don’t know how to talk to them and miscommunicate in hurried bulk-billed consultations.    

On top of that, the pandemic has meant that many people have put off accessing preventative care as they play Russian roulette between getting a mole checked at a skin clinic and copping a dose of covid on the way through as governments remove protections in public places.  

The recent decision in the Senate marks a symbolic step in the ACT’s journey from adolescence to adulthood. This might also be an opportunity for the ACT’s Assembly to display other adult developmental markers – namely realising that just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you have to rush into it. 

For a Human Rights jurisdiction with a government that stamps itself as socially progressive and concerned about human rights, this might mean shouldering up to level the playing field for decent health care, incomes and social supports so people have lives worth living.  

A comprehensive, fully funded ACT Disability Health Strategy might be a good start along with the federal parliament acting on calls for a $50-a-week disability and illness supplement to lift people out of poverty.

Craig Wallace is the acting CEO at Advocacy for Inclusion. He can be followed at @CraigWtweets