Euthanasia; Your Opinion?

Rodney Hide (ACT NZ): We are hearing tonight Parliament at its best, because we have a very fine bill put up by Mr Peter Brown. Whether one is for it or against it, Mr Brown¡¦s motives are honest and true. We have heard two very good speeches tonight against the bill. I want to speak in favour of Mr Brown¡¦s bill, as a matter of principle and as a matter of personal experience. The principle is this. I believe that we, not the State, do own our own body and our life. I believe that if we choose to we can end our life. It is obviously the most drastic decision that a person can take, but one can do that. I believe that it is an affront to deny people who want to end their life the dignity of ending it in a way that is humane.

That is what our current law does. Of course we have to have a sharp line between suicide and murder, and this bill has that. That is why I support the bill. I ask members at least to send it to a select committee and hear what the people have to say.

I want to raise a memory of a man whom many members knew¡XMartin Hames, who died last year on 8 August. If Mr Brown¡¦s bill had been the law, Martin Hames would still be with us, I am sure. He would not have needed to take his own life, as he did. He had Huntington¡¦s disease. He discovered in 1979 that his mother had it. He did not marry, because he had a 50 percent chance of getting it, and he was diagnosed with Huntington¡¦s disease. He had watched his mother die a terrible death¡Xa death where one loses one¡¦s mind and loses control, to the extent that one cannot swallow.

Martin Hames loved life. He loved independence. He could not stand the thought of ending without the ability to swallow. Last year he prepared everything. He swallowed a whole lot of pills and he passed out. He had bought new pyjamas, and he had a note pinned to his chest saying ¡§Please do not resuscitate¡¨. The ambulance came, and they resuscitated him. He came to in hospital, and they said to Martin Hames that he had septicaemia in his legs and they wanted to take them off. He said: ¡§What would happen if you don¡¦t take my legs off?¡¨, and they said: ¡§You will die.¡¨ He said: ¡§Well, good, because I have Huntington¡¦s disease.¡¨

They gave him some pain relief and pushed him off to the side in Wellington Hospital, and he spent the day dying. I dreaded going to see Martin Hames and saying goodbye to a very special friend, but one of the greatest things I have ever done is seeing a man dying with dignity. He told me, when I went in there, and he told all his friends¡Xfrom Treasury, from Michael Cullen¡¦s office, people from across the political spectrum who had worked with him, and from the National Party¡Xthat he was having a good death. He used to call me ¡§Boss¡¨, and he said: ¡§I¡¦m having a good death, Boss, because I didn¡¦t think I¡¦d get the opportunity to say goodbye to all my friends.¡¨ He had that chance.

We all went in there and, rather than feeling sad, I felt great to see a man who could face his death with such generosity and love of life and friends, and who had been dealt a cruel hand but was not complaining. Martin slipped away that night.

He had written a great book called The Crisis in New Zealand Schools, and he was well on the way to having written a second book, on the Treaty of Waitangi , which would have benefited us all. But he never got to finish it. We do not know whether Martin could have lived for another 10 years, working and writing, because he had to take his own life before it was taken from him.

Death with Dignity Bill - First Reading, Hansard, 30 July 2003