The annual report on euthanasia and assisted suicide in New South Wales reveals a disturbing 53 per cent increase in deaths over the past 12 months.
The first annual report, published in November 2024, covered the first seven months of the euthanasia regime’s operation (28 November 2023 to 30 June 2024) and recorded 398 deaths over that period. This amounted to an average of 13 deaths each week.
This report, while the second annual report available, is the first to cover a full year of deaths in NSW and the results are staggering. One thousand and twenty-eight people died during the 2024-2025 financial year, or 20 deaths each week.
This represents an increase of more than 50 per cent in a single year, which is staggering, and an indication of how quickly a culture of death can take hold.
On top of this, another 471 people were approved for death, but are yet to take the lethal substance. This brings the potential death toll to closer to 30 deaths each week.
Apart from the increase in deaths, there were also a number of other items that were worthy of attention and deeper investigation.
Once again, more than two-thirds of euthanasia and assisted suicide deaths occurred in regional NSW, pointing once again to a lack of health care services in the regions.
Presumably aware of the criticisms this statistic drew during the last reporting period, the NSW Voluntary Assisted Dying Board attempted to draw attention away from this by redefining ‘regional NSW’ in a way that reversed the numbers.
In a table titled Overview of voluntary assisted dying in NSW, the NSW VAD Board reported that 58.5 per cent of deaths occurred in major cities, 34.5 per cent in ‘inner regional’ parts of the state and 7 per cent in ‘outer regional’ areas. A small footnote lists that the definition was sourced from the Australian Statistical Geography Standard.
However, the NSW Voluntary Assisted Dying Act provides a definition of ‘regional resident’ and when this is used, the regional deaths amount to 67.5 per cent of all deaths, rather than the 41.5 per cent asserted at the front of the report. This statistic is mentioned later in the report, along with a note from the Board that attempts to explain it by saying the demographics were such that older people lived in the regions and so the regions should expect a higher death toll. “While 49.5 per cent of those aged 75 years and over lived in regional NSW (the remaining 50.5 per cent in Greater Sydney),” the report read.
But the board’s explanation lacks in a few areas. First, the median age of those who accessed lethal drugs was 75 years, meaning that just as many people under the age of 75 were euthanised as those who were over 75.
Additionally, there are some local government areas in the regions that had extraordinary euthanasia death rates which need to be investigated.
For example, Kiama has around 200 deaths each year, with 28 of these deaths being by euthanasia or assisted suicide, which is 14 per cent of all deaths, while Byron, with annual deaths of around 230 people, saw 28 deaths or 12 per cent of all deaths, occurring because of this regime. In the region of Eurobodalla, which sees around 550 deaths annually, 60 deaths were by euthanasia or assisted suicide, or just over 10 per cent.
To put this into context, it appears that one in seven deaths in the Kiama local government area, one in eight deaths in Byron and one in 10 deaths in Eurobodalla are because of euthanasia. If I were Katelin McInerney, Tamara Smith or Michael Holland, the respective local members for these regions, I would be asking seriously why euthanasia is fast becoming the leading cause of death in my electorate, just two years after it was introduced.
Another item that warrants a closer look is the number of doctors for whom euthanasia seems to have become a bit of a business. The report tells us that there were 73 doctors who acted as coordinating, consulting or administering practitioner for 21 or more patients each.
Each person who gets approved for euthanasia or assisted suicide needs at least two doctors to sign off on the process, meaning that the 1599 approvals would have had to involve 3198 doctors.
But amongst these 73 doctors, there were at least 1533 patients assisted (21+ each), showing that approximately half the euthanasia deaths in the state can be attributed to the work of 73 practitioners.
This is something that should be scrutinised.
Finally, it was reported that 245 patients, or 15.1 per cent of those who made a final request, did so in a shorter time than the minimum five-day waiting period prescribed by the legislation. While there are mechanisms for exemptions to the five-day minimum, when one in seven people are getting an ‘exemption,’ one has to question whether the supposed safeguard is being largely ignored.
These reports from the Voluntary Assisted Dying Board will come and go each year, but their contents give many lines of inquiry as to the supposed safety of the scheme. Hopefully, they will be fully investigated.