If the topic of voluntary assisted dying raises issues for you or your family, you can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Griefline on 1300 845 745. Or see the “Support for families, friends and carers during VAD” on our Resources page.

We need your help to change our laws regarding Voluntary Assisted Dying and other end of life healthcare issues. Change to Qld state and Australian federal laws will not be easy.

Kate Chaney’s private members bill to amend federal legislation to enable the use Telehealth for VAD purposes is a cautionary tale in how difficult this is going to be. For details on the issue of Telehealth & VAD see our blog post here.

Our current wish-list for law reform in the VAD area is detailed below. It will be a moving target in the years to come.

So Santa, if you’re listening, please see our list for Xmas 2024 below, and hurry up already.

Hey Santa

“Dear Santa,

1. We would like to be able to use Telehealth for VAD purposes to help our disadvantaged regional and remote Queensland brothers and sisters (see our blog post here); and
2. We would like the Canadian MAID Act’s eligibility criteria and ethos, to be incorporated into our Qld VAD Act - to create a new hybrid VAD model for Qld. Please incorporate sections 241.2(1) “Eligibility for MAID”; and 241.2(2) “Grievous and Irremediable Medical Condition” from Chapter 3 - Bill C-14 - Statutes of Canada 2016, into our Act; or
3. If we can’t have number 2 on our list Santa, we would like the Australian Capital Territory’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2024, eligibility criteria and ethos, to be incorporated into our Qld VAD Act - to create a new hybrid VAD model for Qld. Please incorporate the sections 11(1) to 11(6) inclusive from their Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2024 into our Act. Additional request: aspects of their Section 12 may also be worthy of consideration for incorporating into our new hybrid legislation; or,
4. If we can’t have Number 2 or Number 3 on our list Santa, we would like to delete "(ii) is expected to cause death within 12 months;” from Section 10 (1) (a) of our Qld VAD Act. i.e. to remove the time to death requirement from our Act; and lastly (we are not done yet Santa!),
5. We would like a completely new set of laws targeting the disease specific difficulties regarding VAD and dementia. We propose completely separate dementia specific laws are required, commensurate with the requisite legally binding, watertight, Advance Directive; for people to instigate, while they still have decision-making capacity; should dementia overcome them at some point in the future.

Thanks Santa, your beer’s in the fridge. 😉"

We will expand on our Law Reform wish list and ideas in our Blog Posts.

Item 1 - Telehealth and VAD - Blog Post Available Now

For the nuts and bolts of item 1 on our wish list of Law Reforms please see our Blog Post here.

Item 2 - Integrate the Best Bits of the Canadian MAID Legislation into our Queensland VAD Legislation

We will cover this issue in a future blog post. Please stay tuned, or sign up for our Blog / News Updates - see our Contacts page for details.

Item 3 - Integrate the Best Bits of the Australian Capital Territory Legislation into our Queensland VAD Legislation

We will cover this issue in a future blog post. Please stay tuned, or sign up for our Blog / News Updates - see our Contacts page for details.

Item 4 - Drop the Termination and Time to Death Clause from Section 10 of our Qld VAD Act

We will cover this issue in a future blog post. Please stay tuned, or sign up for our Blog / News Updates - see our Contacts page for details.

Item 5 - Dementia & VAD Specific Legislation - With Legally Binding, Watertight Advance Directives

We will cover this issue in a future blog post. Please stay tuned, or sign up for our Blog / News Updates - see our Contacts page for details.

In order to help us all work together to improve access to VAD, with the above targets in mind, we will create a “Take Action” blog post shortly. Please check back later for details.