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Senator for Tasmania, Helen Polley stated:

Voluntary euthanasia cannot promote the dignity or humanity of vulnerable older Australians in an environment in which our elderly feel undervalued, ignored and forgotten. Instead, it further will entrench ageist views, desensitise us to euthanasia and ultimately lead to a devaluation of life and premature death.

The law dictates that government must protect all individuals and govern in the interests of all Australians — we must protect the vulnerable at all costs.

Paul Russell, “As Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia are Legalized, Elder Abuse is Becoming a Bigger Problem“, LifeNews, 12 January 2018

Human experience shows that all laws are flouted to a greater or lesser extent, and we would be surprised if the law in this field were an exception.

House of Lords, “Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill – First Report“, 3 March 2005, para 239

Daniel Pask, an Australian disability activist with Lives Worth Living who has spina bifida, condemned the bill.

“People with an alarmingly broad, poorly defined array of conditions would have been permitted assisted suicide had this bill passed,” he said. “So it posed a real threat and sent a terrible message to people with disabilities, whose basic needs and human rights often still go unmet, that our lives are not worth living.”

Andrew Smith, “Tasmania rejects assisted suicide… again“, LifeSiteNews, 25 May 2017

LWL believes that the current broke and broken disability support system around Australia, including in Tasmania, may create a raft of pressures in people’s lives which may impact on decisions.

“Dear MPs: Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2013“, Tasmanian Times, 13 October 2013

As a palliative care specialist with over 25 years of practice, mostly in Victoria, I have found the institution of the Victorian law to have a devastating effect on my practice of palliative medicine. I have witnessed the devastating impact of this law on the cohesion of teams, on the relationships within clinical units, and as a cause of deep moral distress among many of my medical colleagues, for whom this law, and its accompanying narrative, is anathema to the very core of our sense of what it is to be a doctor.

Odette Spruijt, “Assisted dying: push for removal of safeguards alarming“, InSight+, 3 August 2020

… you avoid the difficult questions like, if assisted dying is deemed medical treatment, how can it be denied to anyone who suffers? (My homeland, Canada, which legalised it last year because of a 2012 case about a terminally ill woman, has recently granted it this year to a 77-year old woman because she had osteoarthritis).

Or, what will sanctioning suicide for some do to efforts to combat suicide generally? Or, won’t defining dignity as the ability to go to the toilet unaided demean and devalue the existence of many disabled people who lead enjoyable, fulfilled lives, thank you very much, despite not having that ability?

Kevin Yuill, “I’m an atheist and against euthanasia“, Spectator Australia, 27 July 2017