Warning from MP: The price of the euthanasia law is too high

Writing in Stuff, National MP Maggie Barry asks voters to consider the high stakes for the elderly and vulnerable if this Act was to pass in the October referendum.

As deputy chair of the Justice Committee who considered the End of Life Choice bill in 2018, Maggie has studied the proposed legalisation very closely and analysed the submissions that came through the Select Committee.

The only thing the eight member Justice Select Committee could agree on after two years of hearings and deliberations was that the bill was unfit to pass into law. It returned to the House virtually unchanged but with a strong expectation that amendments would be debated to improve the safeguards.

Because of a deal the bill’s sponsor cooked up with NZ First, every single one of the more than 120 proposed amendments they put up to make this bill safer was voted down. All the changes requested by medical professionals, hospices, disability, dementia and suicide groups were discarded so there are now no genuine safeguards.

We are now being asked to decide through a simple yes/no vote the most seismic shift in law and medical practice in our country’s history.

Read Maggie's full story in Stuff