Andrew Denton

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 a fashion as is 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.

We often hear this about people that choose VAT, 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 C word than cancer, Nicole, and that's cascade.

And sometimes at the end of life, you're...

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 there 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 palliative care service and nurses did an extraordinary job.

They facilitated him dying on the beach, which is where he wanted to die.

He'd grown up near the beach.

You know, I think for myself, gee, wouldn't I like to go with perhaps a decent cheeky cocktail and a nice sunset and beautiful music and

My football team having won the premiership, that might be a bit hard.

But isn't that what we want?

We want to die as who we are, not as a shell of who we are.

It's an enforced taboo still.

I mentioned earlier the people that oppose 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.