Well, this is a bit of a strange moment for me and probably for you as well. I have to tell you something. There's something I have to share that has been going on in my life and that I now have to tell you about because I'm not going to be here for a few months. I've got to go off and deal with something. And the thing I've got to go off and deal with is cancer. I've got a cancer.
And from his diagnosis with aesophageal cancer in twenty twenty four to openly wrestling with end of life decisions, beloved ABC broadcaster and longtime voice of Sydney Afternoons, James Valentine took his listeners along with him as he stared down his own death.
I'm James Valentine, and this season we're talking about death or on this episode, why we don't talk about it enough?
Now?
After his passing, that openness continues with James's decision to share the fact that he ended his life through voluntary assisted dying or VAD.
He was able to do the VAD, which was really important to him, so we were all able to be together and just you know, yeah, it was really beautiful. In his final moments, he was still concerned about making a difference and that was something that was so important to him that we mentioned that.
I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM today. Go Gentle Australia founder Andrew Denton on James's decision and why some Australians still have trouble accessing VAD despite it being legal in all but one Australian territory. It's Wednesday, April twenty nine. Andrew, you knew James Valentine and had spoken to him about voluntary assisted dying. How did that converse sation go? And could you tell us about how open he was while facing death.
About a year before James died, I did a remarkable podcast conversation with him and a clinical psychologist, doctor Kerry Noonan, which, in James's inimitable style, he titled Let's talk about Death, Baby, and we spoke very openly about the difficulty of confronting death, the way conversations shut down around it, about how to have those conversations, and about what happens after people dian how to have those conversations, and it was remarkably raw
because of James's situation, he was in between his first cancer treatment and he had gone into remission. But at the end of the conversation, and I remember very clearly, I could see James getting emotional and I asked him, I said, what are you feeling right now, James?
Well, if we have a funny connection over many decades and to observe you go through, to see you transformed doing that, it's been quite extraordinary. And I'll probably just contemplated my own death and exactly.
Right, jameson.
I think it says a lot about his courage and his skill as a communicator that he was prepared to be so open about something about which many of us ever closed.
Now, James had decided that he wanted his family to share with the public how he died. Why do you think that he wanted them to know? And what type of impact do you think that kind of conversation and sharing will have on the community.
Look, it shouldn't be courageous, but unfortunately there's a great deal of stigma that sits around for untry sister dying. It's a stigma that was in many ways created and forced and amplified by its opponents, most particularly the Catholic Church, who still refer to it as some form of suicide, even though leading suicide prevention organizations in Australia sare is
something distinctly different choice between two forms of death. I think they wanted to talk about it because they for the same reason that James wanted to talk about his illness and his diagnosis and his treatment, that he wanted to demystify and model a good way to approach end of life.
We knew it was.
Coming, we knew there was sort of no way out of this, but to be able to sort of do it on his own terms was really important to him, and to sort of get that choice as much as he could in this time, and he really wanted to know, like he wanted it to be something that people knew that he did that if there's ever you know, he could lend his voice to the argument of why this is such a necessary thing for so many people.
The fact that his kids have now gone on air and talked about what those last days were like for James, the level of control and love it enabled.
Everyone's bringing a heavy heart to it and it's a big loss, but he was so full of joy still and we're full of joy and we're laughing along to all we clips in the saxophone, and.
James had a big living wake where he was farewell by three hundred of his friends and the people who loved him. So it leaves, and I'm sure it's left James's family and friends with beautiful memories of James. And I understand he played the sacks, which of course was
part of his essential persona. And you still grieve. Death is still the loss it will always be, but at least you know that that person has died in as merciful of fashion as as possible, and that you've been part of that, and you have helped them with their final wishes. So I think all that informed James's choice and the family's willingness to be so public about it.
And as you said, his family they've spoken about how special the time was leading up to his death because they knew it was coming. Is that a common feeling for families in this sort of situation.
We often hear this about people to choose vad that even if they were unsure about the process or unsure about the original choice of the person going through it, they deeply value the fact that they were able to have that time without the levels of distress and collapse that I was describing before. I've learned there's a scarier sea word than cancer, Nicoleon, that's cascade. And sometimes at the end of life, your medical condition can really accelerate
out of control. And the great value of VAD the choice of that is it gives you the offer of control even if things accelerate very quickly. If you have that medication, they're with you, or if you have access to that medication, you can still make things happen in a way that you want them to be. I'm just thinking of a young man whose local palady care service and nurses did an extraordinary job. They facilitated him dying on the beach, which is where he wanted to die grown
up near the beach. You know, I think for myself, Gee, wouldn't I like to go with a perhaps a decent p cocktail and a nice sunset and beautiful music and my football team having won the premiership. That might be a bit hard, but that's isn't that what we want? We want to die as who we are, not as a shell of who we are.
Coming up.
The barrier is still standing in the way of voluntary assisted dying. Andrew voluntary assisted dying is now legal in every state except the Northern Territory, but it still doesn't feel like something that Australians are really comfortable talking about. Why is that, do you think and what examples have you seen of that kind of taboo playing out in our healthcare systems and in age care.
It's an enforced taboot still. I mentioned earlier the people who opposed this law that it's always been their line to describe this as suicide, which has a very different meaning in society. The most senior Catholic in this country, the Archbishop of Sydney, Reverend Anthony Fisher, at the end of last year, described doctors going into hospitals to legally
assist people to die as quote unquote kill teams. You can't get much more aggressive or stigmatic than that, and it astonishes me that a man of Christian faith, who much is under the banner of mercy would use such aggressive and ugly language about medical professionals helping people at the end of their life. There's a lot of other
problems too, you know. We did a survey of most of Australia's age care providers in each state and nationally to see what kind of information they provide about VAD, and only five percent full providers provide full information about VAD,
so there's an institutional reluctance to talk about this. Doctors are often dismissive or sometimes openly hostile towards people make requests because of their personal beliefs, and even in the Age Care Act, which was rewritten and relegislated last year, despite repeated it is from ourselves and others within the definition of end of life care, there's no mention of that. So this flows down and the kind of behavior we see sometimes is inexcusable.
And yet despite all those problems and the debate and the taboo, we've seen the applications for voluntary assisted dying rise by more than forty percent in the last year or so, but still almost half of patients who start the process don't actually finish it. Why do you think that is.
Well, there's a number of reasons. First of all, the law itself, the process is not meant to be easy to get through. It's meant to be careful and deliberative, and that's as it should be. And not everyone chooses to proceed. It's a choice, and some people choose palliative care. Some people feel just having that control was sufficient for them, so they don't choose to proceed. But there's also the other factors, as I was mentioning before, hostility and obfuscation
from doctors when asked. You know, there's a fine line between conscientious objection, which the law allows as it should,
and conscientious obstruction. I spoke to a man in Sydney last year who died of cancer, who had been told by his doctors he had between three and six months to live, which has legally made him eligible for VAD, But when he asked them to support his application, they just stonebaarded it and they stonewalled him for months, and he got to a point where in tears he said to his oncologist, I'm dying, Please, I need this information.
And at the end they gave him the information and he immediately switched to somebody that would support his case. And when you consider the fact that the Catholic Church still provides a lot of Australian health care and is deeply opposed to VOD, they describe it as intrinsically evil.
They are concerned with that are center support VAD that will affect their career prospects, and when you have, as I said Archbishop Anthony Fisher describing VAD doctors as kill teams, you get a sense of how that pressure might flow through to people that may support VAD within the Catholic health system. We're afraid to say.
So, Andrew, your organization go gentle. Australia is campaigning for telehealth to be an option for patients who want to go through this process. Why do you think that's so important.
Well, it's a matter of equity. Really, Not all sick people live near a doctor. Not all sick people live near a hospital. The problem with telehealth it's a strange one really because it refers to a think of the Commonwealth Criminal Code and it's an amendment that was written in two thousand and five, long before our VAD laws existed, saying that it's illegal to use a carriage service to
encourage or assist in suicide. But as I mentioned before, state's law and leading suicide preventional organizations do not see VAD as suicide. They have different things. However, this law has been interpreted in different states to mean that doctor can't use telehealth or zoom or email or even a text to discuss or advise at parts of the VAT process.
In some states they have to use snail mail to send a prescription, so it's a very anormalous law which should have nothing to do with VAD and everybody from the state's attorney's generals to health ministers to the AMA has petitioned the Federal Attorney General, Michelle Roland to fix this law. It's a pretty easy fix, you just remove VAD from the definition of suicide and the law. But complete silence. I find it hard to understand. The Prime
Minister has always been supportive of this law. He came to the launcher go Gentle at the National Press Club a decade ago. It's caused unnecessary harmon and it's difficult to understand why the government won't act on what is a relatively easy fix.
Andrew, you've been campaigning for this for so long now and you've achieved so much, But what is really the ultimate goal and where do you want Australia to be on this issue over the next five to ten years.
Well, I would like to see first of all, just VAD normalized as a compassionate person centered part of end of life care. I would like it to be thought of in exactly the same breath as palliative care. You know, it's interesting that eighty percent of the people choose bad are also in palliative care. These things are all part
of the same discussion. And I do have a real question about taxpayer funded health care facilities which obviously have a faith basis, denying legal care to taxpayers in their care. I think that's a real issue, and I think we need to look at the laws of the governess. You know, currently VAD doctors they have no peak organization, there's no government support for their needs, for instance, remuneration. So I'd
like to see them support it. And you know, I think that John lennonsong, whatever gets you through the night, whether it's VAD or palliative care, or your faith or none of the above, these should be all uncontested its paces. They should be supported. If your faith tells you that that is not something you want to be involved in, I completely support you right not to be involved. But our laws should recognize that this is legal and that people should not be allowed to stand in the way
of it. Newsflash, We're all going to die, and we all want to be taken care of as best we can. When we die. And that's my dream that this is an uncontested thing for all Australians wherever they live, no matter their faith, no matter their beliefs.
Andrew, it's an important topic and thank you so much for speaking with this about it.
Thanks, Nicole, really appreciate it.
Also in the news, the federal governments release draft laws aimed at forcing e tech companies to pay for Australian news published on their platforms. Under the proposed news Bargaining incentive, platforms like Meta, Google and TikTok would face attacks of two point twenty five percent of their Australian revenue if
they don't strike commercial deals with news publishers. The government says the law is designed to fix gaps in the existing bargaining code after platforms were able to avoid payments by pulling back from news, and is expected to raise up to two hundred and fifty million dollars a year, and a UK parliamentary inquiry has cast out on the country's ability to develop and deliver nuclear submarines promised as
part of the Orcist Defence packed. The deal, estimated to cost up to three hundred and sixty eight billion dollars, is meant to deliver Australia its first US built submarines by the early twenty thirties, before delivering British designed submarines within the same decade, but the House of Commons Defense Committee says decades of underfunding, workforce shortages and low submarine availability in Britain could derail the plan. I'm Nicole Johnston and this is seven a m. Thanks for listening.