Andrew Denton

who had been told by his doctors he had between three and six months to live, which has legally made him eligible for VAD.

But when he asked them to support his application, they just stonewalled him.

And they stonewalled him for months.

And he got to a point where in tears, he said to his oncologist, I'm dying.

please, I need this information.

And at the end, they gave him the information, and he immediately switched to somebody that would support his case.

And when you consider the fact that the Catholic Church still provides a lot of Australian health care and is deeply opposed to VAD, they describe it as intrinsically evil.

They are concerned if they are seen to support VAD, that will affect their career prospects.

And when you have, as I said, Archbishop Anthony Fisher describing VAD doctors as kill teams,

you get a sense of how that pressure might flow through to people that may support VAD within the Catholic health system, but are afraid to say so.

Well, it's a matter of equity, really.

Not all sick people live near a doctor.

Not all sick people live near a hospital.

The problem with telehealth, it's a strange one, really, because it refers to a thing called the Commonwealth Criminal Code.

And it's an amendment that was written in 2005, long before IVAD laws existed, saying that it's illegal to use a carriage service to encourage or assist in suicide.

But as I mentioned before, state's law and leading suicide prevention organizations do not see VAD as suicide.

They are different things.

However, this law has been interpreted in different states to mean that doctors can't use telehealth or Zoom or email or even a text to discuss or advise parts of the VAD process.

In some states, they have to use snail mail to send a prescription.

This is a very anomalous law, which should have nothing to do with VAD.