(upbeat music)
- [Alice] The End of Life Bill is on its way
and David Seymour is out to kill us all.
- The ayes are 69.
The nos are 51. (audience cheering)
- Personally I feel genuinely conflicted about euthanasia,
given my intense fear of death,
and my intense dislike of David Seymour.
(cheery music)
So I've invited some clear-headed
people around to talk it through.
- So, we're all here for a perfectly natural dinner party.
(loud chuckling)
Please dig in, get started.
Let's eat some food and talk about euthanasia (giggles).
- This one's a cardboard.
- This one here? - This one (gasps)?
- You wouldn't believe it, would you?
- Wouldn't believe it would you (laughs)?
- But this one is surfaced so you can
actually draw in paint or pastel.
- Ohh! - Oh that's so nice.
- Yeah, and this one here is a woven coffin.
- [Alice] That was Bryn's favourite one.
- This is my personal favourite.
- Very tactile isn't it?
I love the way you're touching it.
And that's what people do.
Especially the baby ones are beautiful,
'cause you can actually hold them.
- I thought I would be more chill,
but now that we're talking about it,
(chuckles) I do feel a bit weird.
- You get a bit anxious, do you?
- It does make me a little bit anxious.
- Well soon as you mentioned the baby though,
my whole butt hole was like ugh no (chuckles).
- That gets everyone, the babies.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Fucking hell.
Oh my God.
- I won't mention babies again.
(laughing hysterically)
- For me the fundamental understanding of euthanasia
would be that a person decides that the suffering
that they're experiencing is no longer compatible
with living a good quality of life.
And chooses to pick when that ended and how it ended.
- Well one of the problems is the debate has been
polluted by so much scare-mongering.
- I'd love to know what the scare-mongering is?
- Yeah, the elderly abuse, that's the big one.
- Yeah.
- [Man] That we'll pop off.
- Yeah I want that inheritance now, I can't wait.
(cash register chiming)
Or the coercion.
- That is a genuine concern of mine,
is that the implicit coercion,
like a person getting nervous about being a burden
on their friends or family, or something like that.
- What is a burden on a family?
I am living with incurable cancer.
I have died, I have been on life support.
And not once did I feel,
or did anyone make me feel that I was a burden.
- It's interesting because I have attempted suicide before.
For those 20 years when I was having that suicidal ideation,
I did feel like a burden in many respects.
In the end, I actually attempted suicide six times
over the course of those 20 years
that I was living with this injury.
And not once was I ever questioned
about why I'd attempted suicide,
because the medical professionals were constantly like,
well you're a tetraplegic so why wouldn't you want to die?
Because there is a perception
that if you have my disability,
my quality of life is so poor, why would you wanna live?
And that's over 80% of health professionals feel this way.
- But Claire let's not talk about disability
because that doesn't qualify.
- I'm sorry, do you mean you don't qualify under the bill?
- Yeah. - Yeah, correct.
- Yeah but I've been monitoring,
you know what has been happening?
In other countries overseas and Canada,
which our bill is very close to.
- Yeah.
- Justin Trudeau has said yes we will be
widening the criteria to include disability.
- So this is what we've used for shrouding.
So there's a lot of people that want to be shrouded.
- Shrouding? - Shrouding, OK (laughs).
- Yes, so that means a person's body is wrapped.
So we have all this lovely cotton here, we can use anything,
even fabric that the family want.
We wrap the person's body,
never the face initially, that's last.
And they might lay here, go home,
people see them, so people can kind of--
- I quite like this.
- Yes it's lovely, isn't it?
- Yeah I would love to, I was about to say
I'd love to get this for my Mum.
(chuckles loudly)
- Like a Christmas present?
Oh I'd love to get that for my Mum.
- I've been trying to find a position,
and trying to not be over-influenced
by my Catholic background.
I'm a bit of a coward,
so I can anticipate that real hardcore suffering,
I wouldn't be very good at it.
(giggles)
Right, look I suppose I'm ambivalent now.
- Te Hurinui, what's your position on this?
Because I know you've kinda gone
on a little bit of a journey with it.
Like you were against euthanasia as a concept,
is that right?
And then you've kinda come round?
- Yes, the intention of euthanasia, I support that.
It's the practical implementation of it, I'm not so sure of.
My Mother had a prolonged cancer journey.
She was a devout Catholic
and she was also very strong in her tikanga Māori.
When she got really sick, I remember her one time saying,
"If euthanasia was available to me, I would take it."
Her main reason, apart from the pain
and suffering, was loss of dignity.
And having to put our Father through
having to wash her, clean her.
I thought about it
and I said Mum's just dropped a bombshell on me.
(chuckles)
It seemed to me that it became a part of a bigger issue
for Māori beliefs and values.
Because it also includes IVF treatment,
it also includes becoming an organ donor.
- Because the body is tapu.
- Because the body is tapu. - Yeah.
- So I think it's a part of that bigger conversation.
Our beliefs and values could possibly
not be fit for purpose in the modern environment.
- [Alice] Wow.
- Can I ask a question?
- [Te Hurinui] Mmm.
- What did your father think?
- Well Dad just said that's my job, to look after your mum.
I think if Mum had asked him,
I dare say he would've said no.
- Yes, and my husband would too.
Yeah I tried to think about
what it would be like if I was at that stage.
And I thought I couldn't make a decision myself.
This would have to be a family decision.
- But I don't think that should be in law.
I wanted to bring that into the --
(doorbell rings)
euthanasia. - Oh my God (laughs)
- [Bobbie] In New Zealand.
- Hello!
- [David] Yeah g'day.
How you going?
- Good, how are you David?
- I brought dessert.
- Come on in (chuckles).
- [Bobbie] Oh the man.
- Yeah, the man, the myth, the legend.
- Hi, how are you? (cheery music)
- (chuckles) So how does that feel?
- Um, a bit weird but also remarkably comfortable.
- [Bryn] Yeah.
- And if I went to sleep like this
I'd probably have quite a good nap.
This is a nice coffin.
If I die I would like this one.
I mean when I die.
- The beautiful thing about filming this is now we know.
- Yeah.
- If your parents are like, I think she'd like this,
be like no watch Bad News.
- In this scenario, I die and my parents are still alive!
(laughs hysterically) - I don't know.
- Maybe parents was the wrong thing to say.
- What happens to me, what are you planning (giggles)?
- Look, I think that it's actually gonna be challenging
to get the referendum through.
- [Alice] Really?
- And the reason for that is we've seen, people are able to
make contentions with no evidential basis.
And nevertheless, they seem plausible
and they take a lot of debating to defeat.
And their reasoning is, we can't find any correlation
but it's David Seymour's obligation
to prove there is not a correlation.
- And that's interesting what you say though
in that, like, I would argue that maybe that should be
the case when we're dealing with something so serious,
maybe it should be the case
that we are beyond rigorous in our assessment of it.
- Well, OK, OK.
But the government has in place a set of laws now.
Parliament does. Are you prepared to defend the amateur
violence of suicide, the suffering,
the people writhing in agony,
the, I guess, informal euthanasia that goes on now?
'Cause that all happens under the current law.
So if we're gonna talk about where we put the onus,
maybe people who oppose the change should have to prove that
there's nothing wrong with the status quo.
So it's a separate issue.
- But do people really understand?
See my worry is, even when I read the bill, I'm doing a PhD,
it's a very difficult bill to understand.
There is also a lot of academic stuff, for example,
that recent academic article
that came out from Otago University,
one of their recommendations was that there wasn't enough
consultation with the minority groups
and the vulnerable populations
that will be affected by this bill.
- It's already handled. - Can I say this before you?
- Not just myself!
I'm talking about people with terminal illnesses.
- [Bobbie] Yes.
- Who are friends of mine.
- But again you've gotta have this debate based on
the hard evidence of what actually happens.
Not what is speculated might happen.
- But we still need their voice.
- She does raise a fair point though.
The consultation process needs to be
as wide and broad as possible.
I will hope that some representation was made
at select committee level and prior to that,
from Māori leaders.
- There was a variety actually.
Yeah of people who came forward and it was highly contested.
- I think also Māori, they have a lot to give.
If this bill was to go ahead, I would love to see
some sort of conversation about their
te whare tapa whā model. - Te whare tapa whā, mmm.
- So we look at other things that are
holistically affecting a person.
Not just the terminal illness.
- But assisted dying is not and never will be compulsory.
It's a choice, if we-- - It's a solution for many.
- Well if it's a solution,
to a ghastly, grisly death that I'm likely to have.
- No no it's--
- Call it a solution but--
- A solution to the fact that we don't
have proper healthcare for people.
- That's a different issue. - If I may jump in?
- It's my right to choose the manner of my death.
- Yes it is.
- See that's the philosophical question that I'm, you know,
is life a personal belonging?
- Yes! - Well I think it's shared.
And my life couldn't be my life without my sharing it
with a whole lot of people.
And somehow we have a joint responsibility to care for it.
- Right, excuse me if I can just interrupt?
- Well (laughs), so if I'm writhing around,
my great consolation is you care for me,
I'm sorry, I make my life my choice.
- Well how many people die writhing around
that have completely uncontrollable pain?
- Well having gone up and down the country
and spoken to literally thousands of people
about this, a lot, and if you're asking--
- Oh no I think I need a more scientific answer than that.
- You ask yourself that by defending the status quo
you are forcing people to suffer.
- Me. - Terribly.
- Me. - So it's not like it's--
- I am an actual person, I don't want to die.
But when I do die, it's no one else's business
the quality of my death.
- I think we need to understand that along with people
like yourself, there will be collateral damage
because it's going to be--
- No, no.
- You're saying I do not trust,
not one but two GPs and a psychiatrist?
- Yes I am saying that.
- At three random? - Absolutely I'm saying that.
- Who do you trust, do you trust anyone?
- They're gonna be making the decisions
whether you live or die.
Do we want these people?
- No, I make the decision!
- [Alice] Can I?
- There's also vulnerable people that will be coerced
or whatever the situation may be,
it's like the death penalty.
And I know we hate bringing this into it,
because it's a different thing.
- Totally irrelevant. - That is absolute--.
- Yes but the reality is right now
if this goes into law, there will be collateral damage.
And I have a problem with it
because I know people will choose this!
- We have collateral--
- And they're choosing it because they don't have support!
- Can I just talk about this?
There is a misconception here,
that this is a choice to die.
It's not a choice to die.
It's a choice about how you die.
- [Bobbie] Yes!
- If you die. - Yes!
- And so this whole idea that it's somehow a substitute
for healthcare, that only works if you think
it's a choice to die or not.
It's not a choice to die,
it's a choice about how you die, if you're dying.
- May I just interject really quickly here
and say Te Hurinui, is there any point in this
conversation where you feel you have wavered
on your support for euthanasia?
- No.
Although I understand what you're saying Claire,
from a purely selfish perspective,
I would like to have that choice.
- Now that you're in this coffin.
- [Bryn] Mmm.
- Are you pro-euthanasia?
- (chuckles) Yes.
- [Alice] Are you still?
- Mmhm.
- Are you pro-euthanasia?
- [Chris] Yes I am.
- You are.
- [Chris] Yes.
- Wow. - Are you?
- I'm confused. - Ohh.
- I think that it depends on a person's capacity to suffer.
- Yeah, gosh.
- And I think we should have the right to say
we don't want to suffer that much,
in a disease process, anyway.
- It's just so scary, the idea of picking a time.
- Of being like here it is, I guess Tuesday midday.
Yeah, that's me.
- But I do appreciate sort of being able
to prepare for your own death.
I can do kind of weirdly like this idea of going like,
I like this coffin and I like this thing,
so that the family isn't left with all these huge decisions.
- Decisions.
- I remember when my Mum passed away,
they gave us a booklet of coffins and it was just,
you feel you're being hit by a train.
So you're just like, I don't know, that one?
Where as if we knew or if, you know...
- [Alice] Yeah if you knew--
- If people knew that it was like, oh this would be nice.
- Yeah, that's true.
- All right, goodnight.
(laughs loudly)
- May I ask now the table, if we went around
and we had to vote on this tomorrow,
what box you think you would be ticking? David?
- Well, I'd be a yes.
- [Alice] OK, all right.
- Definitely a yes.
- Yeah, I'm a yes too.
- If I had to vote today I'd be a no.
- Unfortunately I'd be a no. At the moment.
- You've got the casting vote.
- That's how I've always dreamed it would be.
(loud chuckling)
- No we've got three yeses here darling.
- Ah no I'm a yes, I'm in favour of euthanasia
and my fear is that to not pass this is
to make a decision for other people.
(birds chirping)
Does anyone want a cup of tea by the way, or ah, coffee?
- Well I have a couple of other things
I'd be grateful to be able to say?
- Yeah sure go on, say what you wanna say,
and I'll make some coffee.
But I'm listening to you.
- Yeah, one is-- (upbeat music)
♪ Ooh ♪
♪ Ahh ♪
♪ She's got bad news ♪
- A friend of mine she, her Grandma passed away
and then she said that night she felt
like someone was touching her feet.
Like comfortingly, in a nice way.
- Yeah (giggles).
- And then when my Opa passed away, my dad rung me
at like 4 AM, he's like Opa passed away,
just to let you know dadada.
And then I put the phone down,
and I was like, please don't touch my feet.
(laughs hysterically)
Please, I don't want you to touch my feet,
even if it's comforting.