2007 AGM Address — Tim Saclier

Tim Saclier delivered this address to the DWDV Annual General Meeting, 25th February 2007, accepting the Rodney Syme Medal for distinguished contribution on behalf of himself and his wife Beryl.

When Dr Syme told me that Beryl and I had been chosen along with Marshall Perron to receive an inaugural Syme Medal, he expressed his embarrassment that the medal was named after him.

I can’t think of anyone more suited to the honour, and I suggested that MY embarrassment was greater than his. Anyone who had joined DWDV or VESV in the last 20 years will not have heard of the Sacliers. Who are these intruders cheeky enough to accept an inaugural Syme Medal?

Especially as there are among you several who have been members since the early days, and some who have been ACTIVE members for more years than I have.

Therefore, it is only fair that I should try to justify my presence here today, if only to alleviate some of my embarrassment.

Perhaps there’s a kind of poetic symmetry between these two presentations. When Beryl and I began in 1973 to gather together a group of kindred spirits, and then formed VESV in February 1974, we were at the start of a process in Australia that, 22 years later, saw a peak achievement in the cause of voluntary euthanasia, the Northern Territory Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, an achievement in which Marshall Perron was so notably involved.

If there was any causal relationship between these two events it was indirect and accidental. Many who supported the ROTI Act may have had little contact with VESV and its history. But what began in 1974 gave an organisational impetus to the popular demand for law reform.

I’m not forgetting, either, that before the first v.e. societies were formed there were individual campaigners who worked alone or through their own progressive societies. Humanists, in particular, were prominent supporters of the VE societies in those early days, and no doubt still are.

Many of our early members were humanists, as were those who formed the NSW society, also in 1974. (Blessed are the Humanists, without whom we would still be living in the Dark Ages.)

But having societies dedicated to legalising v.e. focussed the efforts of many people who had worked through societies that had divers objectives.

"Blessed are the Humanists,
without whom we would still be
living in the dark ages."

More than that, the inauguration of state v.e. societies in Victoria and NSW encouraged the formation of others. The Western Australian society was formed in 1980, and although the South Australian society came a little later, there had been several attempts at legislative reform in South Australia, of which the first, to my knowledge, was in 1980. We had early contact with the Kiwis. Societies were formed in Wellington and Auckland in 1978. These were amalgamated last year.

We went international in 1980. We represented VESV at the Oxford conference of right to die societies in that year, when the World Federation of Right to Die Societies was founded. This Federation of old and new societies was an opportunity for the new societies to learn from the old, and the old to be enlivened by the new. The fortunes of the Federation have fluctuated over the years, frequently in the course of a tug-of-war between the conservatives and the radicals. But that’s where a federation is useful. It nurtures a range of thought.

So what’s changed over the years? The British VES, founded in 1935, might well say: Nothing! Its first attempt at legalising VE in 1936 failed, as did Lord Joffe’s bill last year. Seventy years of campaigning, and no result. Do we have that patience?

But we have seen some changes in Victoria over the last 33 years.

"Forcing the politicians off the fence
is one of life’s gentle pleasures in the
computer age."

Technology is one. It was around 1981, when we were preparing for the World Federation conference held in Melbourne the following year, that an American colleague asked if I had a computer. The only computer I had seen at that time was the IBM that occupied an entire floor of ICI house where I worked. The idea of a computer that sat on one’s desk (or, as now, slips into one’s pocket) was a fantasy beyond my dreams.

But now, computers and the internet allow the exchange of information to a degree most of us are only just beginning to grasp. Which is a good point at which to congratulate DWDV and its web master for its excellent website, and for its handling of information on the Victorian elections. Forcing the politicians off the fence is one of life’s gentle pleasures in the computer age.

Then there are the news media. I once foolishly gave an interview to Truth newspaper. (the older male members of my audience will remember Truth, if for no other reason than the page three girls. Even the yellow press had islands of beauty in a sea of dross.) During this interview I stressed the need for law reform, both to protect doctors and to ensure the autonomy of the patient, because, in the absence of reform, euthanasia, either passive or active, was already being practised, probably illegally and not necessarily voluntarily. The article appeared on page one with a gigantic headline: KILLER DOCTORS STALK MELBOURNE.

Journalists (perhaps even headline writers) are much more mature now. They’ve had time to consider the issues, and they’ve noticed the unyielding approval of VE by Australians in every opinion survey that has polled them. Opponents are still there, their compassion overcome with godly zeal, but their voice is less strident than it was, or else it is balanced by comment favourable to VE.

You’ve probably heard the yarn about the queue of people waiting to pass through the Pearly Gates. Long delays, impatient candidates. Suddenly a chap with a stethoscope round his neck and a black bag in hand strides to the front of the queue and walks straight in. “Oi”, yells one bystander, “How come he gets in?”. “Shush”, says St Peter. “That’s God. He likes to play Doctor now and then”.

So. Medical professionals ... have they changed? The conservative end of the profession hasn’t changed much, judging from recent guidelines – said to be “world first” – for health professionals faced with terminally ill patients who want to die.

The palliative care expert who announced the guidelines said the response to such a patient “may be as simple as offering to provide a priest”. This report gestated for three years, and it brought forth ... a priest! That any doctor would abandon his responsibility to his patient, and hand it to a priest, a shaman, a medium of the spirit world, is a sad regression to the pre-scientific world view, and an admission of professional defeat.

Nurses, of course, have always supported our aims, because they’re in the firing line. They have the suffering patients in their care for the long days, the long nights, week after week, not just for the fleeting minutes of a doctor’s ward inspection. But doctors, too, have shown an enlightened view for a long time.

A poll of British doctors as far back as 1964 showed that 36% of them would practise VE if permitted by law to end the terminal suffering of a patient at her request. Australian doctors are unlikely to be any less compassionate now, in view of the popularity of v.e. among the general public, currently running at 84% according to the recent Age online poll. And more doctors would be publicly supportive if v.e. were legal. But that requires political action ... and have politicians changed?

When we first wrote to Victorian MPs to gauge their support, I remember a letter from Jeff Kennett, with words to the effect that, as he got to know his colleagues better, the more he was persuaded that euthanasia was a good thing.

The only parliamentarian who took us seriously was Rod McKenzie, MLC for Geelong Province. It was Rod who in 1980 introduced a bill in parliament that was the forerunner to the Medical Treatment Act 1988, which still gives us the only present prospect of choice in dying. Inadequate it may be, but a practical step forward, for which we have to thank Rod’s dogged determination over the years.

"Jeff Kennett said that, as he got to
know his colleagues better, the more
he was persuaded that euthanasia
was a good thing."

Political parties are strange beasts. Rod’s successor in Geelong, my electorate, was Elaine Carbines, a capable Labor MP and one sympathetic to DWDV’s charter. She lost her seat in the recent election, thanks to her party’s reallocation of preferences. As a result of this idiocy, the party that now represents me in the Upper House is ... the DLP! So while individually there is much more political support now on both sides of politics for v.e., we still have to endure the vagaries of party machines.

On the Federal political scene the opposition to our objectives is more obvious. In Mr Ruddock’s second reading speech to the suicide censorship bill in 2005 he argued that Australians were at risk from internet sites that were favourable to suicide. He could not name any such site. The sole example that he gave was that he had heard on a radio program that certain teenagers in Japan were meeting for group suicides allegedly as a result of chat rooms. I’m fairly sure Mr Ruddock is no fool, but his contempt for the intelligence and good sense of his electorate knows no bounds.

We could see that this censorship bill, this attack on free speech and the right of association, was merely a follow-up to the events of 1996, when the pious members of both sides of federal politics robbed Northern Territorians of their vote, by killing the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act. Their campaign to smother all attempts to legalise good dying is far from over.

In many respects we’ve come a long way in 33 years, but the future seems to me just as clouded as it always was. Fortunately DWDV has a splendid management team to face that future.

When Beryl and I joined the British VES in, I think, 1972, after seeing an article about it in Good Housekeeping magazine – you see, even domestic science can be a springboard to social reform – we had no intention of starting an Australian society. Only after seeing no sign of anyone else doing it did we take the plunge. We knew we had no natural talent as leaders of a movement, though we were willing to do the routine work. Beryl was the keeper of records and the friendly voice on the phone, while I slaved over a hot typewriter – VESV’s top technology in those first years was a manual Olivetti. Fortunately my day job gave me access to photocopying, and we found a printing company in Blackburn that did a good job on our VESV Report. We also had the generous support of the London VES, which supplied us with publicity material until we created our own.

What we did in those years was made possible with the support of enthusiastic members, who were a constant encouragement to us. One of our keen elderly members, who was always a source of ideas and humour, used to say that voluntary euthanasia had given him a new lease of life.

Although we had few professional people on our committee, we relied heavily on the leadership of those we had: Robert Young, of La Trobe, as president for many years; Helga Kuhse, of Monash, who was the voice of VESV locally and among our overseas colleagues; and the Reverend Kenneth Ralph. The professions that we lacked, at least publicly, were medicine and the law. I had an ambition – to retire as soon as we had doctors, lawyers and managers running VESV.

"I had an ambition to retire as soon
as we had doctors, lawyers and
managers running VESV. I didn't
last that long."

I didn’t last that long. In 1983 I was offered early retirement from my day job, an offer it is never wise to refuse. We sold up in Melbourne and bought a small business in the Goulburn Valley. Being away from Melbourne and making a hectic living in the country meant Beryl and I could no longer give ourselves to VESV. In later years I was also unwilling to be a grey eminence, a Ghost of Christmases Past, haunting VESV’s current management. I did rejoin the committee briefly in the early 90s, but I could see that capable and professional people had come on board. Had I not retired earlier this was the time to do it.

As you can see from Rodney Syme’s presidency over the last decade or so, DWDV is in good hands. He himself may have dreams of retirement, but he will have the satisfaction of knowing that he and his colleagues have set DWDV up for a vibrant and successful future. More than that, he has shown the courage and the personal qualities that have made his presidency exceptional. And DWDV, and we, will have the Syme Medal to remember him by.

We wish him well.

Tim Saclier