The Final Choice: End of Life Suffering by Caralise Trayes

Author:Caralise Trayes [Trayes, Caralise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Death & Dying
ISBN: 9780473524517
Google: A-mVzQEACAAJ
Publisher: Capture & Tell Media
Published: 2020-01-15T04:23:33+00:00

CHAPTER 13:

Grant Illingworth QC

Grant Illingworth’s home in Epsom is impressively central. It matches my expectations for one of our country’s highly-regarded barristers: large, formal... inside gates. Proper, but down-to-earth Grant answers the doorbell and welcomes me into his downstairs office. We sit to discuss a lawmaker’s perspective on the Act.

I’ve read Grant’s opinion pieces published by Stuff and have a fair idea that he considers the Act contrary to what good law is intended for. But I want to know why and what exactly it is about this Act that bothers him.

Grant has been practising law in New Zealand for more than 40 years and was appointed as Queen’s Counsel in 2003. I ask him to help me better understand his concerns in ‘non-legal speech’; really a Legal Guide for Dummies on the EOLC Act.

“It’s important to note that Parliament has enacted the End of Life Choice Act on 16 November, 2019. This means that it will automatically come into force if the outcome of the binding referendum is ‘yes’. Parliament will not need to review it; it will be introduced in the exact form it’s currently in.”

Why is that important? “It means that people voting need to fully understand what this exact Act is. It’s a finished piece: there is no room for adjustment.

“It’s an extraordinary situation really… for an Act to wait for final approval from a binding referendum and immediately become active. This has never happened in New Zealand before. Normally this decision is made by Parliament.”

And to Grant, that isn’t a good thing.

“It’s a huge concern. The public are being asked to make a legal decision—which is for this particular form of end-of-life choice legislation. How are the public expected to know the legal technicalities? Yet they are actually voting for just that—a set of legal rules that will come into force. The Act contains a number of complicated procedures that the general public can’t be expected to understand, certainly not without help.”

Grant says these types of Acts are normally considered and dismantled by lawyers and courts as there can be all sorts of subtleties that need to be considered. “In this case it seems the select committee has not really attempted to grapple with the technicalities of the draft that was enacted. In effect, Parliament has passed the buck to the public in relation to an issue that would be called ‘quality control for legislation’.”

NZ First says the general public are knowledgeable and up with the play; choosing to send it to a referendum is a good act of democracy in their view.

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with referendums being used to determine a policy. But there’s a big difference between making a decision on a policy and making a decision on a specific set of rules. If the New Zealand public were being asked, ‘Do you think we should have an end-of-life choice? Yes or no’ (or something to that effect)—it would be a perfectly good referendum question. But to be asked to sanction an Act of Parliament as a whole is a different thing altogether.

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