1 September, 2026
The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (14:39): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before addressing a question without notice to the Attorney-General on the topic of voluntary assisted dying.
Leave granted.
The Hon. R.A. SIMMS: Today, ABC News reported that you, Attorney-General, and the health minister wrote to the commonwealth Attorney-General, the Hon. Michelle Rowland MP, advocating for a change to the commonwealth criminal code. Currently, the criminal code prevents doctors from using telehealth for voluntary assisted dying, forcing patients to travel long distances to attend appointments, with some dying before being able to access the care. My question to the Attorney-General, therefore, is: will the Attorney-General raise the matter at the next meeting of the Standing Council of Attorneys-General, and what further action will he take in relation to this matter?
The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Deputy Premier, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Arts, Special Minister of State) (14:40): I thank the honourable member for his question. I will give a bit more detail, but in relation to his question of whether I will raise it at the next Standing Council of Attorneys-General: absolutely, I will. I raised it at the most recent one that happened during our winter break in Darwin, and I foreshadowed that it will be raised again at the next one, so the answer is an emphatic yes to that.
It is something that has been raised, and certainly I as Attorney-General, since I have held that position after the 2022 state election, have raised it a number of times. I think it was mid-2022 when I attended my first Standing Council of Attorneys-General, and it was raised then. It has been raised at about half a dozen meetings of all the attorneys-general since. I think both myself and, separately, the Minister for Health at the time in 2023, the Hon. Chris Picton, have written to the federal government raising concerns about the inequity that not being able to use telehealth for voluntary assisted dying provides particularly for those in remote and regional areas of South Australia but across all states.
I think at different times all states and jurisdictions that have had voluntary assisted dying enacted have had either health ministers or attorneys-general write to or speak to the federal government about the desire for this to change. At the moment, sections 474.29A and 474.29B of the commonwealth criminal code preclude any use of a carriage service, which has been held to include telehealth, for any discussion of suicide.
This was brought in by a Howard era government, when the Northern Territory, many years ago, became the first jurisdiction anywhere in the country to allow voluntary assisted dying. Of course, the commonwealth can make laws for the territories, and this particular part of the criminal code was brought into force in the Northern Territory's then laws some decades ago. I do note with great interest that the Northern Territory has now become the first and the last jurisdiction to implement voluntary assisted dying. Just last week, their voluntary assisted dying scheme passed the Northern Territory assembly.
I can assure the honourable member that it is something that I have been advocating for since the middle of 2022, as a reasonably new Attorney-General. It is something I last advocated for only a number of weeks ago, and it is something I will continue to advocate for. Telehealth is governed by very strict prescriptions about medical practitioners, and medical practitioners need to abide by a code of ethics. There are very strong safeguards put in place, and it does mean that people in very remote or regional areas have difficulty accessing what every parliament around Australia has deemed legitimate health care.
I note that even in the last few weeks there have been South Australians who, at the very end of their lives, have spent their last precious moments on this planet advocating for this particular change, quite a remarkable and brave thing to do. There have been, I note, some views expressed by those opponents to being able to use telehealth for voluntary assisted dying that it could lead to coercion over telehealth. There is absolutely no evidence that that could be the case.
I know that when Victoria became the first jurisdiction in Australia, after the Northern Territory laws were knocked out by the commonwealth, Justice Kelly's very first report on their voluntary assisted dying scheme addressed exactly that, the thought that there could be coercion or coercive control imposed to try to encourage particularly elderly people to use voluntary assisted dying.
The Victorian reviewer said emphatically that has not happened, and I think her quote was:
Trust me, I have looked for this. If anything it is the opposite. It's children of people at the end of their life not wanting their loved ones, generally their parents, to use voluntary assisted dying and wanting to spend more time with them.
Certainly, talking to GPs as late as last week who practice voluntary assisted dying in South Australia, that is their experience as well. So I think it is unfortunate that there is this Howard-era hangover that precludes telehealth being used for voluntary assisted dying and it is something that both the health minister and myself in South Australia will continue to advocate a change for.