TVNZ One News 10 April 2019
Family First Comment: Dr Hickey says the bill is not fit for purpose. “We’ve just done a massive fundraising campaign for Mike King’s campaign and here we are willing to bring in legal suicide basically…” Dr Hickey says the bill threatens vulnerable Māori already being failed by the health system. “In Oregon 63% of those that were euthanised were from poor backgrounds who were on state insurance and who refused treatments to have kept their lives going well. We do have a public health system that is rationing certain things like dialysis and who are the biggest recipients of dialysis? Māori and Pacific peoples.”
The group of lawyers who specialise in protecting vulnerable New Zealanders say the controversial euthanasia bill is fatally flawed.
Former legal academic Dr Huhana Hickey says the bill is a threat for Māori who are already have high rates of suicide, terminal illness, mental health issues and disabilities.
Speaking to Te Karere, Dr Hickey says the bill is not fit for purpose.
“We’ve just done a massive fundraising campaign for Mike King’s campaign and here we are willing to bring in legal suicide basically,” she says.
In its current form, according to Lawyers for Vulnerable New Zealanders, the End of Life Choice Bill has 35 flaws.
“There is a danger in this legislation and it comes with irreversible, irremediable and terminal. You cannot determine what irreversible, irremediable is,” says Dr Hickey.
“I qualify under that and I still got a lot of life left in me. Many of us will quality for that. Depression after your husband, wife dies will quality under that.”
But the bill’s advocate Act Party leader David Seymour doesn’t agree.
READ MORE: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/euthanasia-bill-could-threaten-vulnerable-m-ori-if-becomes-law-advocacy-group
