VAD: The State As Entitled Rapist

FURTHER to last Tuesday’s post on the Palaszczuk government’s intention to ‘legalise’ homicide under the auspices of “voluntary assisted dying,” yesterday I studied the parliamentary report that rubber-stamped the bill nihil obstat. Under the proposed Queensland law, conscientious objectors will be required to refer-on patients to medical practitioners willing to kill them. Private hospitals and nursing homes will also be compelled to facilitate killing on their properties.

 
One of the submissions to the inquiry whose hearings ostensibly inform these extremist protocols was contributed by Dr David Kirchhoffer, Director of the Queensland Bioethics Centre and lecturer at the Australian Catholic University (submission 455, footnote 599). Dr Kirchhoffer repudiates the spurious via media whereby the government’s plan to “limit the right to freedom of conscience and belief” is justified by a desire to “promote the rights of others to access health care”:

A person who conscientiously objects does so because they have reached a judgment of conscience that the practice in question is morally wrong. This judgment does not mean that they believe only that this is morally wrong for themselves, but that it is morally wrong for everyone. To provide information to someone about how they can do something morally wrong would make the provider complicit in the act of wrongdoing, and so providing such information would itself be morally wrong.

For contemporary Australian governments, does no mean no? No.

As bio-ethics and as jurisprudence, Kirchhoffer’s argument is unimpeachable. It is, indeed, a basic precept of all sub-branches of the criminal law. It is shameful that an axiom so substrative should have to be explained in writing at all, let alone that officials of the state should dismiss it with the same contempt that Lenin reserved for the Romanovs. But the overarching gamesmanship at work here is even more sinister: ignorance as a malicious ruse. By forcing good people to do bad things, the Palaszczuk government – fully aware of the legal novelty and the unethical enormity – wants to psychologically belittle and humiliate them. That is obvious. After all, if there is neither shame nor villainy in being a hangman, there should be no reason not to advertise.

What’s also obvious is that state governments are now very selective about who they will persecute for conscientiousness in the context of communication. A doctor may soon be admonished to tell others how and with whom to commit a genuine malefaction but a pregnant mother is arrested for telling others how and with whom to peacefully assemble. Like ‘President’ Biden’s dying America, Australia is becoming a post-law society; increasingly, justice is whatever left-wing extremists say it is. Annastacia Palaszczuk might look like the reassuringly jolly lady serving cream buns at your local bakery – albeit when she’s dolled up for a hens night – but don’t be taken in; an extremist is exactly what she is.

Labor dares Scott Morrison to stand up for what he believes in. Will he?

The vileness of this bill – like the literal end it seeks – is breathtaking: the VAD committee admits the consultations by ‘telehealth’ it encourages are criminal offences under Commonwealth law. For this reason, the Queensland government wants the Federal government to alter the meaning of the word ‘suicide’ lest executioners be prosecuted for using a carriage service to organise somebody’s death. As I’ve pointed out before, the Queensland government is accidentally correct to insist that “assisted dying” should not be seen as suicide. It should be seen as homicide.

The Prime Minister dismissed pleas to legislatively protect free speech because doing so wouldn’t create “one job.” Knowing his track record as a marshmallow in the arena of luvvie polemics, the Queensland Premier is inviting him to play the role of beholden vice-roy to her royal prerogatives or be blamed for grannies dying in agony. If Mr Morrison has no ability or willingness to turn that trickery on its head in a case so laden with endangered conservative canons, he deserves even more scorn from the Liberal Party’s base than he receives already.

Final thoughts: looking for Gauleiters in all the wrong places

For a feature that went to air on 15 August, ASIO joined forces – for promotional purposes, at least – with the home of MAFS, Lego Masters and vicious lying about Cardinal George Pell to claim that it now spends most of its time monitoring neo-Nazis, none of whom ever seem to be charged with offences. If there was a mass trial of Australian stormtroopers it must have been held in camera. A week after 60 Minutes’ ‘investigation,’ Peter Dutton’s beloved cybercrime bill, giving the AFP and intelligence officers the power to spy on Australians, was passed in the Senate with the support of Labor. The alleged menace of “right-wing extremism” had been central to the optics-haggling and salesmanship of the encryption panic for at least two years. Throughout the Western world, ‘Nazis’ are proving to be very useful to spy agencies.

While that tale was wagging a dog, the Queensland Labor government has been openly promoting: the currently illegal use of telecommunications to enable homicide; the deployment of ideologically affiliated doctors to poison the old and the infirm; the raiding of private hospitals to carry out these acts; the menacing of citizens for their religious beliefs; compelling medical staff to be accessories and to abjure their Christianity. If Canberra’s national security nabobs want to know where to find the country’s brownest fascist hotspot, they won’t need a cybercrime warrant. A simple address will do: 2A George St, Brisbane City.