Victoria just changed its assisted dying law. Most people missed it.
Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas pushed through amendments that let doctors bring up killing you. Not wait for you to ask. Bring it up.
That wasn’t allowed before. The original 2017 law banned it. It was one of 68 “safeguards” we were promised.
Now it’s gone.
The Woman Behind It
Mary-Anne Thomas has been the architect the whole way through. Sat beside Dan Andrews for every step. Keeps a low profile while Jacinta Allan takes the front page.
Here’s the bit that’ll ruin your Sunday.
Same minister runs an inquiry into medical misogyny. More than 13,000 Australian women told her inquiry they went to a doctor in pain and got told it was in their head. She told The Age she was “shocked.” Told the Royal Australian College of GPs to “brace yourself.” Said women were being treated like drug addicts when they asked for relief. Called it a “misogynist view that pain is part of women’s burden.”
Then she turned around and passed a law that lets those same doctors — the ones who gaslit those 13,000 women — suggest killing them.
You couldn’t write it. If a mate told you this down the pub, you’d say he was having a lend of you.
What Actually Happens in the Hospital Room
You’re sick. You’re tired. You’ve spent your life looking after other people. Finally it’s your turn.
You go to hospital for help. For hope. For someone who cares.
Instead, the doctor opens a pamphlet. Says, “We can also kill you. It’s legal now.”
You never thought about it. You came in to get better. But now an authority figure — a doctor, the one person in that room with a white coat — is suggesting maybe your life isn’t worth the bother.
That’s not offering a choice. That’s planting a seed.
A strong person pushes back. But a sick person, alone, tired, scared of being a burden — they don’t push back. They nod. They take the pamphlet home.
Nine Days Cut to Five
The new law also cuts the waiting period from nine days to five.
Four days less to reconsider. Four days less for a family member to turn up and talk you out of it.
When California cut its waiting period to 48 hours, prescriptions for lethal drugs jumped 47% in a single year. This isn’t theory. It’s a pattern that plays out every time the rules loosen.
Older Aussies in hospital often go days without a visitor. They feel like a burden. They get depressed about being alone. Then a doctor mentions death as a tidy option. Five days later, it’s done.
Follow the Money
The whole thing starts making sense the moment you ask who benefits.
The medical industry benefits. It’s cheaper and faster than palliative care. Less nursing staff. Less drugs. Less beds.
Nursing homes benefit. They have contracts that trigger when the bed empties.
Tired families benefit. Looking after an ageing parent is hard work. If the doctor does the hard bit for them, some families will quietly look the other way.
The law says two “independent” doctors must sign off. Independent from what? Can both work for the same clinic? Same hospital? Same nursing home that just lost $1,200 a day when the patient checks out for good? Nobody asks.
What Canada Looks Like Five Years Ahead of Us
Canada started where Victoria is now. A decade later, here’s how it plays out.
Sean Tagert had Lou Gehrig’s disease. Forty-one years old. Needed 24 hours a day of care. The government funded 16 hours. The other 8 cost him $263.50 a day out of his own pocket. Couldn’t afford it. Chose medical killing. Left an eleven-year-old son.
Two women in Ontario had multiple chemical sensitivities. Couldn’t find accessible housing. Applied for medical death. One said flat out: she was killing herself “because of abject poverty.”
The UN Special Rapporteur flew to Canada and said they were alarmed. People weren’t choosing death. They were being squeezed into it by a system that stopped helping them live.
That’s the road Mary-Anne Thomas is putting Victoria on.
Freedom vs Salesmanship
Here’s the bit that matters.
People have always been able to end their own lives. Nobody stops them. That’s freedom.
What changes when the state gets involved isn’t the freedom. It’s the marketing.
Suddenly the government is selling death. Painless. Dignified. Easy. Free. A doctor brings it up. A nurse hands you a leaflet. A social worker mentions it’s an option. All of them nice people. All reading from a script.
Real dignity is knowing your life has value and that the system is on your side. Real dignity is a doctor fighting to keep you alive, not suggesting the exit.
The Bullshit Rule — Why Nobody Yelled
The media barely touched these amendments. A handful of articles. Three pages of Google results for a law that changes what a doctor is allowed to say to a dying person.
Not a conspiracy. A newsroom full of blokes and sheilas who don’t want to get labelled. Who don’t want the “anti-compassion” mob at their door. Who know their editor reads the same talking points. Who’ve got a mortgage.
So they don’t write the story. So Mary-Anne Thomas gets to keep her quiet back-office profile while she quietly ticks off one safeguard after another.
We’ve seen this movie before. Canada. Belgium. The Netherlands. The pattern doesn’t change.
First it’s terminal illness. Then depression. Then poverty. Then loneliness. Then “mature minors.”
Every expansion is sold as compassion. Every expansion has a Mary-Anne Thomas behind it.
The only way it stops is if enough ordinary Australians see what’s happening and say so out loud.
This post is part of the Life & Death thread on Common Sense Australia — where we look at what gets replaced when something natural is swapped for something engineered, and who pays for the swap.
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