More money than sense

$5m in will for right-to-die campaign

Who knew that the late (Labor) Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Clem Jones, was worth $150 million? And that he still wanted to be in politics after his death by funding the cause of euthanasia law reform?

This bequest is so stupid, it's verging on the positively offensive. Who on earth thinks that euthanasia has (to date) failed as a political cause because it can't get enough media attention? It gets a huge amount of coverage, most of it written by a profession (journalism) with an undeniably soft-Left tendencies. Whenever it comes up as a media topic, there is a flood of letters tot he editor from euthanasia reform supporters.

Aren't the chances high that the Northern Territory or ACT will have a go at implementing it again, now that we have Labor at Federal level?

Frankly, it's hard to see how the executors are going to find useful ways to spend the money. If I were them I wouldn't touch Philip Nitschke with a barge pole: his inability to rouse himself with too much concern about the merely bored wanting to kill themselves make him his cause's own worst advocate.

Surely it would be better spent on work directly relieving the suffering of the dying who either can't, or don't want to, accept euthanasia as an option. I would have thought that $5 million could fund at least a few palliative care beds indefinitely, or pay for a facility to be built in a place that has none at all at the moment. It would then be used for some direct relief of suffering, rather than helping a movement that the media can't get enough of.