Parliamentary committee releases consultation paper on Northern Territory voluntary assisted dying

ABC NEWS (Australia)

One year ago, an independent advisory panel handed down its final report on voluntary assisted dying, recommending the practice be legislated in the Territory. Today a committee of parliamentarians are preparing to take the panel's recommendations back out to the community in the hopes this consultation will be the last.

Transcript

00:00The floor is now open on one of the Territory's most taboo talking points.

00:06A parliamentary committee today releasing its consultation paper on voluntary assisted dying.

00:12Territorians haven't seen resolution on this issue for 30 years

00:15and the committee are committed to making sure that we finally rectify that.

00:20With a plan for community contributions, the paper has the support of those who did the last consultation.

00:26This consultation paper has now picked up what we recommended in terms of a model

00:33and it's made, I think, a clear explanation of what we had recommended

00:38and it's taking that back out to the community and saying,

00:41well, what do you think about this and are there any issues that you've got with it?

00:44So I think it is a good refinement.

00:46While the committee plans to build on the work of the expert panel,

00:49it has to report back to Parliament in September, leaving it little time to complete a mammoth task.

00:55Twelve community consultations are planned in August alone.

00:58That's more community consultations than the expert panel held over a period of eight months.

01:03The government confident the job will get done.

01:06We don't want to see any delays to the LCAC's report into VAD.

01:10We've asked them to report back in September and we expect that to be on track.

01:14I'm cautiously optimistic that we will achieve our task

01:18because we have a committee of government, opposition and crossbench

01:22all working together well at the moment.

01:24Ten more weeks of talks for legislation three decades in the making.

01:28We'll expect that to be slightly more Okele.

01:29First, keep promising and tight at the moment.

01:30Next, we'll be looking at the schauen

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