Ben Smith is a resident of Hobart. He has been following the issue of euthanasia and assisted suicide since the early 1990’s. Ben was involved in successful campaigns to oppose the legalisation of euthanasia in NSW in 1995 and the campaign to override the Northern Territory’s euthanasia laws championed by Kevin Andrews MP in 1996/97. Ben led protests in 2003 against Dr Phillip Nitschke’s promotion of do-it-yourself death kits. These protests received national press coverage.
More recently, Ben attended the Hope Australia Anti-Euthanasia conference in Adelaide in May 2015, at which he met Andrew Denton. A few months later, he was in the audience of the Q&A show on the issue of euthanasia in November 2015 in which Andrew was a panelist.
Ben has been a speaker at both a national and international level on euthanasia and assisted suicide. Ben has been involved in advocacy on a number of social issues in Tasmania over the last three years.