Senior Lecturer, Sydney School of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, Camperdown, New South Wales.
Professor of Law, Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Faculty of Business and Law, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland.
J Law Med. 2022 Dec;29(4):1168-1181.
Voluntary assisted dying laws have now been enacted in all six Australian States with reform being considered in the remaining two. While there is an emerging body of literature examining various aspects of regulation, there has been scant consideration of what these reforms mean for First Nations peoples, and to what extent their experiences have been considered in the process of developing legislation. This article provides a critical analysis of how Indigenous perspectives both contributed to, and were engaged with, during the law reform processes in Victoria and Western Australia, the first two States to grapple with this topic. Findings reveal the sophistication in how Indigenous organisations and individuals engaged with this issue and highlight the critical importance of not universalising Indigenous perspectives. Significantly, there was much greater engagement with Indigenous views in Western Australia than in Victoria. We conclude by considering how Indigenous voices can meaningfully influence Australian law reform processes.
自愿协助死亡法律现已在澳大利亚六个州全部颁布，其余两个州正在考虑进行改革。虽然已经有大量文献研究了监管的各个方面，但对于这些改革对原住民意味着什么，以及在制定立法的过程中在多大程度上考虑了他们的经验，几乎没有考虑。本文批判性地分析了在维多利亚州和西澳大利亚州这两个率先处理这一主题的州的法律改革过程中，土著观点是如何做出贡献的，以及它们在多大程度上参与了这一过程。研究结果表明，土著组织和个人在处理这个问题时表现出了很高的成熟度，并强调了不将土著观点普遍化的重要性。重要的是，在西澳大利亚州与维多利亚州相比，与土著观点的接触要多得多。最后，我们考虑了土著声音如何能够对澳大利亚的法律改革进程产生有意义的影响。
