Andrew Denton, Bob Hawke push voluntary euthanasia legalisation

I'm showing my age now, but I can vividly recall that stoush in the Northern Territory over voluntary euthanasia back in the nineties. It was very emotional.

It looks like it may well end up on the political front burner again thanks to the efforts of Andrew Denton and Bob Hawke.

I've long found the Left's passion for euthanasia -- along with abortion -- more than a tad creepy. After all, they're forever banging on about how "life affirming" they are. So why be so passionately in favour of ending life both at the very beginning and end of it?

As is so often with socialist crusades, the push from Hawke and Denton seems to be quite a personal one. Lefties, thinking themselves superior to others, believe that whatever conclusions their own life experiences bring them to must be followed by the rest of the population.

If they stop eating meat, well, everyone has to! If they feel oppressed as women then so are all the other chicks out there! Same with this issue, it seems ...

Denton's commitment to the cause stems from his harrowing experience of watching his father die in an agonisingly drawn out way. I sympathise with him for having gone through that. It must have been one hell of an ordeal. And it's a depressingly common occurrence, no doubt.

In the case of Hawke, it's clearly got a lot to do with his fear of "losing his marbles" as he ages. After all, he was PM for years and he did nothing about the issue back then. He may have sympathised privately with legalisation but he certainly didn't act on it. And I suspect that's because death was very far from his mind at the time. Now that he's in his eighties he's much more focused on the issue.

Hawke and Denton are intelligent men with good intentions. But I'm still not convinced that we should go down the route taken by other nations such as the Netherlands. There are too many strong arguments against euthanasia in my opinion.