Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying law just changed in a way most people missed.

Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas has pushed through amendments that allow doctors to tell desperate, dying patients they can provide poison to kill them. They couldn’t before. The original 2017 legislation explicitly prohibited it.

That prohibition wasn’t accidental. It was one of 68 so-called “safeguards” that we were told would protect vulnerable people from coercion.

Now it’s gone.

Mary-Anne Thomas and the Erosion of Safeguards

Mary-Anne Thomas has been the architect behind these changes. While she posts on Facebook about how tragic it is when young depressed people commit suicide, she’s simultaneously dismantling the protections that prevented doctors from suggesting death to vulnerable patients.

Mary-Anne Thomas has made medical misogyny a signature issue. She launched a Victorian government inquiry into women’s pain. In November 2024, she told The Age she was “shocked” that more than 13,000 women and girls shared stories of having serious pain dismissed or being gaslit by doctors who told them they had mental health issues.

She warned the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners to “brace yourself” for the inquiry’s findings about women’s experiences with doctors. She said women were treated as drug addicts when they asked for pain relief. She blamed Medicare rebates, medical training, and “conscious and unconscious bias” in the health profession.

Thomas said it revealed “a misogynist view that pain is part of women’s burden.”

But then she thinks it’s perfectly fine for those very same doctors, the ones she says dismiss and gaslight women, to tell vulnerable women at their darkest hour that they can kill them.

These women went to hospital for help. If they wanted to kill themselves, they could have. But they didn’t. They went looking for hope, for treatment, for care.

And Mary-Anne Thomas wants to force doctors to hand them a pamphlet about death.

The hypocrisy is staggering. The fakeness is hard to comprehend.

The amendments don’t just allow doctors to provide information. Mary-Anne Thomas wanted to make it mandatory. Doctors must tell patients they can kill them with poison, even patients who never asked, never considered it.

This is the same pattern we’ve seen elsewhere. First it’s terminal illness. Then it’s depression. Then it’s poverty. Mary-Anne Thomas is following the playbook.

The Psychological Blow

Think about what happens in that hospital room.

You’re sick. You’re in pain. You’ve spent your life caring for others. Now it’s your turn to be cared for.

You go to the doctor looking for help. For treatment. For hope.

Instead, the doctor hands you a pamphlet. “We can kill you if you’d like. It’s legal now.”

You never thought about it. But now someone in authority, someone you trust, is suggesting maybe your life isn’t worth continuing.

That’s not offering choice. That’s planting a seed.

Strong people might push back. But we’re not talking about strong people. We’re talking about vulnerable people at the worst moment of their lives.

Think about women especially. Women who’ve spent their lives caring for others, always willing to sacrifice, always putting others first. When they get sick and seek medical help, they’re now told by authority figures that maybe their life isn’t worth living.

That’s what Mary-Anne Thomas has enabled.

The Waiting Period That Matters

The amendments also cut the waiting period from nine days to five.

Four days. That’s the difference between a patient having time to reconsider and a quick spiral after receiving that psychological blow.

Research shows these timeframes matter. When California shortened its waiting period to 48 hours, prescriptions for lethal medication jumped 47% in one year.

Older people in hospitals often don’t get visitors. They’re isolated. They’re depressed about that isolation. They’re feeling like a burden.

Then the doctor suggests death as an option. In five days, that suggestion can become reality.

Mary-Anne Thomas claims she’s helping vulnerable people. But these amendments do the opposite.

Who Benefits

Follow the incentives.

The medical industry benefits. Doctors get paid for the service. It’s faster and cheaper than ongoing palliative care.

Nursing homes benefit. They have financial arrangements that activate upon death.

And the system rewards those who don’t want to take care of people who’ve cared for them their whole lives. Lazy people who can’t be bothered doing the hard work of caring for someone in their time of need get an out. The doctor does the dirty work for them.

The law says two “independent” doctors must assess the patient. But independent from what, exactly?

Can both doctors work for the same clinic? Can one be employed by the nursing home where the patient lives? Can they have ongoing business relationships with institutions that benefit financially from the patient’s death?

These aren’t hypothetical concerns. Victorian clinicians surveyed before the original law expressed significant worry that vulnerable patients would be coerced to lessen the burden on families or the health system.

The Canadian Precedent

I keep mentioning Canada because they’re a few steps ahead of us. This is where Mary-Anne Thomas is leading Victoria.

First, it was terminal illness. Then mental illness. Then poverty.

Sean Tagert had Lou Gehrig’s disease. He needed 24-hour care but the government only funded 16 hours. The remaining eight hours cost him $263.50 per day.

He chose medically assisted death at 41, leaving behind an 11-year-old son. He called the alternative, institutionalisation, a “death sentence.”

Two women in Ontario with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities applied for assisted death after failing to find accessible housing. One said explicitly she applied “because of abject poverty.”

The UN Special Rapporteur visited Canada and expressed extreme concern. People with disabilities were requesting death not because they wanted to die, but because community support didn’t exist.

This is the trajectory under Mary-Anne Thomas’s leadership.

What Actually Changes

People already have the freedom to end their own lives. That’s always been true.

What changes when the state institutionalises it?

The difference is suggestion. Marketing. Authority figures telling vulnerable people that death is a dignified option.

The government is selling death. They’re making it sound painless, dignified, easy. They’re creating a sales pitch and requiring doctors to deliver it.

That’s not respecting autonomy. That’s disrespecting vulnerable people at their most desperate moment.

True dignity means knowing people want to care for you. That your life has value. That the medical system exists to help you live, not to kill you.

When a doctor suggests you might be better off dead, that’s the opposite of dignity.

The media barely covered these amendments. I searched. A handful of articles. Three pages of Google results for legislation that fundamentally changes the doctor-patient relationship.

The safeguards are disappearing one by one under Mary-Anne Thomas’s watch. The pattern is predictable. First they promise strong protections to get the bill passed. Then they water them down. Then they expand eligibility.

Mary-Anne Thomas has form. She’s been pushing this agenda since 2020, right beside Dan Andrews through it all. Every time there’s an opportunity to legislate more killing, she’s behind it.

But the media keeps her out of the spotlight. They talk about Jacinta Allen. They ignore the fact that Mary-Anne Thomas has been there the whole time, driving these policies.

It’s hard to imagine how people can vote for her when they don’t even know what she’s doing. While she pretends to care about vulnerable people, her actions tell a different story.

We’ve seen this movie before. We know how it ends.