Despite the best in palliative care and a sympathetic caring doctor, the suffering became progressively worse until Pa's death almost three years after the onset of cancer.
The final six months were under the most traumatic circumstances.
I have read about suffering caused by cancer but no amount of reading could prepare me for what I was to experience.
As the disease progressed Pa reached the stage where he could wear no clothes and his limbs felt as if they would fall apart at the joints.
He became incontinent and trying to clean him without causing excruciating pain and bruising was impossible.
Eating and drinking resulted in vomiting and in the end all sustenance was refused.
Still his heart beat on.
Morphine doses were increased to help quell the pain but these also brought drawbacks. The pain eased but the morphine took away Pa's speech. His eyes would roll in anguish as he tried to say our names.
He could no longer tell us where it hurt or what his needs were.
But still his heart beat on.
Pa's last coherent words were 'Why am I still alive? Get a gun, shoot me or get me to the Northern Territory'.
The morphine dose was doubled. Pa was still aware of us but could not speak.
Who knows what his bright, intelligent mind was thinking?
Luckily, we had been able to fulfil his wish to die at home thanks to enormous support medically and from family and friends.
People would do the humane thing and shoot an animal in such condition, but this fine man who had survived the torture of world war was now being tortured by those who love him most.
When Pa took his last breath he was surrounded by his loving family, the eerie midnight silence broke only by the music of his favourite cassette tape.
I am a caring, responsible person.
I wonder whether anti-euthanasia Richard Smith has known anyone or had a loved one who suffered as Pa did.
I believe no one could possibly oppose euthanasia if they had experienced Pa's death.
Ironically, I read in the paper the day after Pa's death that a convicted rapist and murderer had been put to death by lethal injection in America.
A violent criminal had been afforded a dignified death while this fine law abiding gentleman was stripped of all dignity.
I pray Pa has forgiven us for our ignorance.
I also have here with me today a farewell note of Mrs Janet Mills, who died with the assistance of the voluntary euthanasia laws of the Northern Territory. I ask you all to compare this with the newspaper article. It reads:
I believe that euthanasia is the greatest thing for people who are sick with no chance of getting better. It's a wonderful idea and it stops people from suffering when they don't need to, but I know I have no hesitation in asking for this. No one should have to suffer when they don't have to.
She had been through such suffering. She continued:
I am pleased that the Northern Territory has such a law, even though it was so difficult for me to use, as at least now I can legally and honestly end my life. I hope this law survives and is able to help others like me, who have found the suffering has become too great. It should not be overturned by the politicians of all the major countries, but given a chance to be made to work in the way it was intended. I want people to see just how important this law was to me now that I'm at the end of my life.
The central question here is choice, option and the right of all citizens to make their own decision in the matter of dying, when they are terminally ill. For that small number of the dying in our society who find themselves suffering without relief, in pain without cure and suffering indignity without alleviation, the central question I ask of you is this: how can you take away their right to opt for voluntary euthanasia when, as intelligent citizens, their hands reach out and ask for assistance of other mature citizens? What right have we to deny them that choice?
It is a fact that each year thousands of people die earlier because their physicians have determined that they will help them to do so. The figures from a study indicate that in Australia some 4,400 people per annum die with their doctor's actively assisting their death. But the problem is that it is without consultation with those people because our laws as they stand inherently forbids it. That is the interpretation of it.
In this speech the choice for those who support the law, is not whether you can stop euthanasia, it is whether you can keep it covert, with citizens denied the determination; and whether you are going to leave it with their medical attendants, their doctors, who are themselves inhibited from discussing the matter with the patients because inherently the law could catch up with them and have them charged with murder or worse, if they were to say exactly what they were contemplating.
It is because of the debate about this matter that public opinion has moved. Let us not deny this. The majority of people in every poll since the 1960's have supported voluntary euthanasia as the right of citizens, as an option that citizens should have. One only has to see both the repeated opinion poll figures and the way in which they have strengthened over those two or three decades to recognise that this is a constant as far as the people are concerned.
A poll back in 1962 showed that 47 per cent of people supported voluntary euthanasia which a patient asked for, compared to 39 per cent who opposed it. Within 33 years, in 1995, the same question put to the people showed that the support had grown to 78 per cent and the opposition had fallen to 14 per cent. So in circumstances where a person asks to die and the doctor is able to respond with lethal injection.
So it is here I leave you with something to think about. I hope that you are now challenged to give people the right to choose voluntary euthanasia, and not to deny them. I hope that you have the courage of the people in the Northern Territory. I hope that you respond to the undeniable force of public opinion, and charge all people who have not yet made up their minds to think carefully about that preponderant public opinion, to give the people a say if you cannot make a decision against overriding the law. Which will set the clocks back decades in what is an inexorable move in the global community as well as here, towards granting everybody the right to opt for voluntary euthanasia.
