Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now as we know, a parliamentary committee conducting an inquiry
into voluntary assisted dying has recommended that laws be adopted
in the Northern Territory. With its final report now complete
after consultation and public hearings right across the Northern Territory,
the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee made eighty six recommendations
in its report, which will be tabled when Parliament sits
(00:23):
later this month. Now joining us in the studio is
the committee chair, Tansel Rahman. Good morning to you, Tansel.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Good morning again, Katie, thanks for having me Tansal.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I know it's been an incredibly busy process. I mean
you've over a short period of time. Let's be honest
about it, You've had to really hit the ground running
from about May, wasn't its correct?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
It's been four months on the fourteenth of May that
we got terms of reference asking us to do this
inquiry and ultimately to deliver everything back by the thirtieth
of September, which we were able to do to the
best of our ability within those very tight times constraints.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Danseil took us through sort of how many written submissions
or how many submissions did the committee receive, because I know,
it wasn't just written ones. You actually, you know, you
had people coming in from communities, You went out to
communities and different you know, more regional and remote parts
of the Northern territory.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
That's right. In the last parliamentary sitting we tabled our
second Interim Report and that details, chapter and verse, all
the places we went to, all the people we heard from,
and in a nutshell, we've got about four hundred plus
written submissions in addition to spending time out and dozens
of remote communities, and you know, you know, probably hundreds
of hours of testimony from witnesses that we collected out
(01:36):
there as well in community consultations. And the focus right now,
of course, is on the drafting instructions for a bill
and perhaps to some extent to the report that supports that,
but I would encourage everyone to also be looking at
all of those submissions and all of that data and
all of that witness testimony because that is where you
find the rich understanding of people out in the bush
have to say on VAD. And the bottom line is
(01:58):
that it's very nuanced. You know, not everybody is for,
not everyone is against, you know, and it's been really
important for us to do those community consultations out in
indigenous communities in particular.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I mean, what has been some of the feedback that
you've received. I'm sure it would have been quite the
mixed bag.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yep. Absolutely. As a general proposition, the phrase that I
land on all the time now is help and choice
to finish up. It's clear to me that Territorians by
and large would like people to have a good death,
and a lot of people want help and choice to
finish up well. And the key thing in all of
this is choice. There are a small, a very small
(02:37):
number of people who have flat out objections to VAD,
but there are a lot of people who have reasonable
objections to VD as well. And so when we talk
about choice, the important thing is to not just provide
choice for people to choose VAD if they want it,
but also people involved in the process to choose to
be part of it or to be able to conscientiously
object from being part of it as well.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Well. This is the thing. Nobody's going to get the choice.
Nobody's going to be able to choose for someone else.
Are they like it? You have to be dying, yes,
and it has to be your.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Choice, correct. Yeah, And the key thing here is that
we are trying to balance all the checks and balances
to ensure that people who are genuinely suffering, intolerably and
termally ill are going to be able to access this mechanism.
But likewise that if there are healthcare practitioners or even
institutions that want to be able to conscientiously withdraw from
(03:28):
the process object that they're allowed to do that as well.
So it's about providing territorians with choice. And as I've
said to you all along, Katie, for me, this is
not actually about being for VAD or against VAD. It
was about conducting an inquiry with rigor and transparency and
making sure that we move the agenda on VAD forward
for territorians.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
And do you feel as though you've been able to
do that? I mean, do you feel as though this
report differs or extends on the work that was done
back in twenty twenty four?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah? I think the report, but more broadly, the inquiry
has collected enormous amounts of data that will add to
our existing understanding and knowledge based on VAD. And I
think with time, as people have the opportunity to go
through all those witness transcripts and testimony, they will understand
that actually it's a very nuanced thing that people have
(04:17):
lots of different positions, but nobody is necessarily uniformly for
or against it, and it's important for us to understand
the broader landscape here of aged care, of palliative care,
of the healthcare system, of how all of this works together.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Hey, a few people have asked, what exactly does cultural
safety mean. I don't know whether you've got an answer
for that based on some of the communication that you've
had and some of the you know, some of the
discussions that you've had in for those in remote communities.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, look, I think the I can't provide a textbook
definition for you that will be definitive, But I think
it was important for the committee to be able to
provide a framework that was going to allow people from
the thirty percent indigenous population to feel like they could
be part of this or also not part of this
if they didn't want to be. And that's I think
broadly where we're going when we're talking about cultural safety
(05:08):
in terms of how you adapt protocols and implement something
like this, it's always about the devil being in the details.
Principle of support for VAD is one thing, but the
bigger picture here is to think about the fact that
to introduce a new health service costs money. There may
be you know, only a handful of people statistically speaking,
probably twenty or less that might end up using VAD
year on year in the Northern Territory. So there's a
(05:28):
competition here between equity making sure everyone can access this
and economy making sure that it can happen and is
an unreasonable burden.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So in terms of the work that you've done, I mean,
have you looked at that how much something like this
will cost in terms of you know, the introduction here
in the Northern Territory.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, And the best place you can get the answers
from Matt are on the fifth of August and on
the fifth of September we held public hearings where the
Department of Health, the AMA and various others we're all
asked questions by myself and the rest of the committee
to try and understand the true cost of what this involves. Because,
as I say, in principle, to just say do support VAD,
yes or no, a lot of people will say yes.
(06:06):
But then you have to think about exactly what the
detail is, how will it be provisioned, how will it
be implemented, And so we have tried very hard to
tackle those tough questions and to try and work out
a model that we think will work for the Northern
Territory based on our unique demographic circumstances and our unique
economic circumstances. We have a healthcare system that is understrained.
(06:27):
We want territories to be able to access this. But
the choices we've made throughout our report in many ways
differ from the choices that were made in the twenty
twenty four report, and we're going to have to go
through a process now of firstly explaining that to all
the parliamentarians and then communicating that all out to the public.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So are you able to give us an idea of
how much money? It was sort of talented that this
would cost.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Well, the numbers that were provided in the submission by
the Health Department in the fifth of September Inquiry hearing
by the Health Department in relation to looking at the
ACT model, there was a range of between one and
twenty million dollars. So that's a big rate and that
there are large setup costs for a lot of these things,
(07:13):
and then they're ongoing costs as well, and so that's
a lot of money, and you have to think prudently
about you have to think sensibly about how you invest
in your healthcare system. And so we've tried to make
choices to utilize the best of our existing services without
trying to create whole new structures if you like, that
will be expensive and difficult to get off the ground. Like,
what we broadly want Recommendation one is for there to
be a law on VAD for territories, and what we
(07:36):
want in practice is for territories to be able to
access that sometime in the future and hopefully not in
the far distant future, but in the conceivable future.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, what kind
of implementation period do you know? Do you sort of anticipate.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Most Australian jurisdictions have an eighteen month implementation window after
they have passed the legislation. So right now we've delivered
a report. Government I'm pleased to see has already committed
to drafting legislation. That legislation will have to come to
the House and be debated. So let's assume that gets
passed at some point early next year, just based on
(08:12):
everything going well, there's still eighteen months of implementation probably
time that you'd be looking at. So it's a couple
of years away before someone in the real world will
actually access FAT And the same is true in every
state and territory. Every state and territory is past a
bad law, but nobody started using it in the act yet.
The implementation period is just coming to the close and
it will just finally start to be used towards the
end of this year.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Now. I know the Attorney General confirmed yesterday that there
will be a conscience vote on VAD laws. Do you
think that that's the best approach? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Absolutely, I think this is a matter of conscience and
the key thing now will be for all MLAs to
work out for themselves how their electorates feel and how
they feel when it comes to a conscience vote. So
I have a good sense about what the people in
Fonglin want, but that's not good enough for me just
by you know, My spidery sense is I'll be running
a survey of my whole electorate through my website, you know,
(09:00):
towns rauma dot com soon for everybody in Fonglimb to
give me a good statistical base.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
We'll I'll certainly be jumping on there. I mean, I
live in your electorate, and I think it's incredibly important
for people to make sure that their voices are heard.
You know. To me, I go back to, well, why
would I make the choice for somebody else if they're
terminally ill as to whether they can or cannot access that,
that is their choice as an individual.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
And I think right now the questions that there will
be in my survey, at least Kaie're not just going
to be like do you support bad yes or no.
Now there's going to be the opportunity to say, do
you support the kind of model that we've proposed in
this report? Are you okay with a twelve month prognosis?
Are you okay with a decentralized model for service delivery?
And these are the real questions that determine whether or
not VAD works and works well. And so you know,
(09:46):
I'm still thinking through exactly the kind of things that
I want to make sure that my electric gets to
provide feedback on. You don't want to overcomplicate it, no,
but the bottom line is that in principal support for VAD, yes,
there is tons and there are plenty of objections as well,
some of which are unreasonable and some of which are
much more reasonable. And that's why I encourage everybody to
look at the whole picture here. For me, this is
(10:08):
about running, as I say, an inquiry that has been
done with transparency and integrity, and for everybody to be
able to look at the full picture and then make
a determination on how to move forward.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
So turns from your perspective and for everybody listening this morning,
what are the next steps?
Speaker 2 (10:22):
So at this stage, the next step really is in
the hands of the government, and the Attorney General and
the Acting Chief Minister have made clear in the last
few days that they'll be moving forward with drafting some legislation.
There is really no formal obligation for myself to do
much past this point, other than the fact that of
the many dozens of locations we've been out to, there
(10:44):
are still some of the transcripts that are being approved
for publication, and so we'll be having a look at
the last few of those. But there's a majority of
them now that have been approved as is in the
associated minutes to the report that have been tabled. And
so if people are interested in and that you know,
the real nuts and bolts and the details or what
people had to say out push on VAD good, bad
(11:05):
and ugly and otherwise that's that's where to go.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Well. Chair of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee also
the member for Fong Limb, Tanseil Rahman, thanks so much
for your time this morning.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Thanks as always, Katie, thank you
Now as we know, a parliamentary committee conducting an inquiry
into voluntary assisted dying has recommended that laws be adopted
in the Northern Territory. With its final report now complete
after consultation and public hearings right across the Northern Territory,
the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee made eighty six recommendations
in its report, which will be tabled when Parliament sits
(00:23):
later this month. Now joining us in the studio is
the committee chair, Tansel Rahman. Good morning to you, Tansel.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Good morning again, Katie, thanks for having me Tansal.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I know it's been an incredibly busy process. I mean
you've over a short period of time. Let's be honest
about it, You've had to really hit the ground running
from about May, wasn't its correct?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
It's been four months on the fourteenth of May that
we got terms of reference asking us to do this
inquiry and ultimately to deliver everything back by the thirtieth
of September, which we were able to do to the
best of our ability within those very tight times constraints.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Danseil took us through sort of how many written submissions
or how many submissions did the committee receive, because I know,
it wasn't just written ones. You actually, you know, you
had people coming in from communities, You went out to
communities and different you know, more regional and remote parts
of the Northern territory.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
That's right. In the last parliamentary sitting we tabled our
second Interim Report and that details, chapter and verse, all
the places we went to, all the people we heard from,
and in a nutshell, we've got about four hundred plus
written submissions in addition to spending time out and dozens
of remote communities, and you know, you know, probably hundreds
of hours of testimony from witnesses that we collected out
(01:36):
there as well in community consultations. And the focus right now,
of course, is on the drafting instructions for a bill
and perhaps to some extent to the report that supports that,
but I would encourage everyone to also be looking at
all of those submissions and all of that data and
all of that witness testimony because that is where you
find the rich understanding of people out in the bush
have to say on VAD. And the bottom line is
(01:58):
that it's very nuanced. You know, not everybody is for,
not everyone is against, you know, and it's been really
important for us to do those community consultations out in
indigenous communities in particular.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I mean, what has been some of the feedback that
you've received. I'm sure it would have been quite the
mixed bag.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yep. Absolutely. As a general proposition, the phrase that I
land on all the time now is help and choice
to finish up. It's clear to me that Territorians by
and large would like people to have a good death,
and a lot of people want help and choice to
finish up well. And the key thing in all of
this is choice. There are a small, a very small
(02:37):
number of people who have flat out objections to VAD,
but there are a lot of people who have reasonable
objections to VD as well. And so when we talk
about choice, the important thing is to not just provide
choice for people to choose VAD if they want it,
but also people involved in the process to choose to
be part of it or to be able to conscientiously
object from being part of it as well.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Well. This is the thing. Nobody's going to get the choice.
Nobody's going to be able to choose for someone else.
Are they like it? You have to be dying, yes,
and it has to be your.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Choice, correct. Yeah, And the key thing here is that
we are trying to balance all the checks and balances
to ensure that people who are genuinely suffering, intolerably and
termally ill are going to be able to access this mechanism.
But likewise that if there are healthcare practitioners or even
institutions that want to be able to conscientiously withdraw from
(03:28):
the process object that they're allowed to do that as well.
So it's about providing territorians with choice. And as I've
said to you all along, Katie, for me, this is
not actually about being for VAD or against VAD. It
was about conducting an inquiry with rigor and transparency and
making sure that we move the agenda on VAD forward
for territorians.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
And do you feel as though you've been able to
do that? I mean, do you feel as though this
report differs or extends on the work that was done
back in twenty twenty four?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah? I think the report, but more broadly, the inquiry
has collected enormous amounts of data that will add to
our existing understanding and knowledge based on VAD. And I
think with time, as people have the opportunity to go
through all those witness transcripts and testimony, they will understand
that actually it's a very nuanced thing that people have
(04:17):
lots of different positions, but nobody is necessarily uniformly for
or against it, and it's important for us to understand
the broader landscape here of aged care, of palliative care,
of the healthcare system, of how all of this works together.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Hey, a few people have asked, what exactly does cultural
safety mean. I don't know whether you've got an answer
for that based on some of the communication that you've
had and some of the you know, some of the
discussions that you've had in for those in remote communities.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, look, I think the I can't provide a textbook
definition for you that will be definitive, But I think
it was important for the committee to be able to
provide a framework that was going to allow people from
the thirty percent indigenous population to feel like they could
be part of this or also not part of this
if they didn't want to be. And that's I think
broadly where we're going when we're talking about cultural safety
(05:08):
in terms of how you adapt protocols and implement something
like this, it's always about the devil being in the details.
Principle of support for VAD is one thing, but the
bigger picture here is to think about the fact that
to introduce a new health service costs money. There may
be you know, only a handful of people statistically speaking,
probably twenty or less that might end up using VAD
year on year in the Northern Territory. So there's a
(05:28):
competition here between equity making sure everyone can access this
and economy making sure that it can happen and is
an unreasonable burden.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
So in terms of the work that you've done, I mean,
have you looked at that how much something like this
will cost in terms of you know, the introduction here
in the Northern Territory.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, And the best place you can get the answers
from Matt are on the fifth of August and on
the fifth of September we held public hearings where the
Department of Health, the AMA and various others we're all
asked questions by myself and the rest of the committee
to try and understand the true cost of what this involves. Because,
as I say, in principle, to just say do support VAD,
yes or no, a lot of people will say yes.
(06:06):
But then you have to think about exactly what the
detail is, how will it be provisioned, how will it
be implemented, And so we have tried very hard to
tackle those tough questions and to try and work out
a model that we think will work for the Northern
Territory based on our unique demographic circumstances and our unique
economic circumstances. We have a healthcare system that is understrained.
(06:27):
We want territories to be able to access this. But
the choices we've made throughout our report in many ways
differ from the choices that were made in the twenty
twenty four report, and we're going to have to go
through a process now of firstly explaining that to all
the parliamentarians and then communicating that all out to the public.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So are you able to give us an idea of
how much money? It was sort of talented that this
would cost.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Well, the numbers that were provided in the submission by
the Health Department in the fifth of September Inquiry hearing
by the Health Department in relation to looking at the
ACT model, there was a range of between one and
twenty million dollars. So that's a big rate and that
there are large setup costs for a lot of these things,
(07:13):
and then they're ongoing costs as well, and so that's
a lot of money, and you have to think prudently
about you have to think sensibly about how you invest
in your healthcare system. And so we've tried to make
choices to utilize the best of our existing services without
trying to create whole new structures if you like, that
will be expensive and difficult to get off the ground. Like,
what we broadly want Recommendation one is for there to
be a law on VAD for territories, and what we
(07:36):
want in practice is for territories to be able to
access that sometime in the future and hopefully not in
the far distant future, but in the conceivable future.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, what kind
of implementation period do you know? Do you sort of anticipate.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Most Australian jurisdictions have an eighteen month implementation window after
they have passed the legislation. So right now we've delivered
a report. Government I'm pleased to see has already committed
to drafting legislation. That legislation will have to come to
the House and be debated. So let's assume that gets
passed at some point early next year, just based on
(08:12):
everything going well, there's still eighteen months of implementation probably
time that you'd be looking at. So it's a couple
of years away before someone in the real world will
actually access FAT And the same is true in every
state and territory. Every state and territory is past a
bad law, but nobody started using it in the act yet.
The implementation period is just coming to the close and
it will just finally start to be used towards the
end of this year.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Now. I know the Attorney General confirmed yesterday that there
will be a conscience vote on VAD laws. Do you
think that that's the best approach? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Absolutely, I think this is a matter of conscience and
the key thing now will be for all MLAs to
work out for themselves how their electorates feel and how
they feel when it comes to a conscience vote. So
I have a good sense about what the people in
Fonglin want, but that's not good enough for me just
by you know, My spidery sense is I'll be running
a survey of my whole electorate through my website, you know,
(09:00):
towns rauma dot com soon for everybody in Fonglimb to
give me a good statistical base.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
We'll I'll certainly be jumping on there. I mean, I
live in your electorate, and I think it's incredibly important
for people to make sure that their voices are heard.
You know. To me, I go back to, well, why
would I make the choice for somebody else if they're
terminally ill as to whether they can or cannot access that,
that is their choice as an individual.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
And I think right now the questions that there will
be in my survey, at least Kaie're not just going
to be like do you support bad yes or no.
Now there's going to be the opportunity to say, do
you support the kind of model that we've proposed in
this report? Are you okay with a twelve month prognosis?
Are you okay with a decentralized model for service delivery?
And these are the real questions that determine whether or
not VAD works and works well. And so you know,
(09:46):
I'm still thinking through exactly the kind of things that
I want to make sure that my electric gets to
provide feedback on. You don't want to overcomplicate it, no,
but the bottom line is that in principal support for VAD, yes,
there is tons and there are plenty of objections as well,
some of which are unreasonable and some of which are
much more reasonable. And that's why I encourage everybody to
look at the whole picture here. For me, this is
(10:08):
about running, as I say, an inquiry that has been
done with transparency and integrity, and for everybody to be
able to look at the full picture and then make
a determination on how to move forward.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
So turns from your perspective and for everybody listening this morning,
what are the next steps?
Speaker 2 (10:22):
So at this stage, the next step really is in
the hands of the government, and the Attorney General and
the Acting Chief Minister have made clear in the last
few days that they'll be moving forward with drafting some legislation.
There is really no formal obligation for myself to do
much past this point, other than the fact that of
the many dozens of locations we've been out to, there
(10:44):
are still some of the transcripts that are being approved
for publication, and so we'll be having a look at
the last few of those. But there's a majority of
them now that have been approved as is in the
associated minutes to the report that have been tabled. And
so if people are interested in and that you know,
the real nuts and bolts and the details or what
people had to say out push on VAD good, bad
(11:05):
and ugly and otherwise that's that's where to go.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Well. Chair of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee also
the member for Fong Limb, Tanseil Rahman, thanks so much
for your time this morning.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Thanks as always, Katie, thank you
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