The final episode of Better Off Dead season two centres on a recording of the Wheeler Centre’s Last Words: Voluntary Assisted Dying panel discussion. Previously broadcast on Radio National’s Big Ideas programme, it features a panel discussion on voluntary assisted dying hosted by Paul Barclay. Panelists include Andrew Denton, founder of Go Gentle Australia and host of the Better Off Dead podcast; Justice Betty King QC, Chair of the Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board; Professor Phillip...

In this episode, we hear from the families of two eligible Victorians who struggled to access VAD. And we hear something never heard before —-- a father and daughter as they actually go through the process of applying for a VAD permit, a process during which initial gratitude quickly turns to frustration, fear and anger.

In this episode, we hear from some of the most senior figures in Australian palliative care. We also hear from others who have a different understanding of such requests, and who believe that the people who make them can be both considered and rational.

In this final episode, drawing on what has worked best overseas, Andrew outlines what he thinks the law for assisted dying in Australia should look like. Plus, we’ll hear from two significant stakeholders who both support a change in the law – one, a former Prime Minister, the other, the one major medical body that does officially support assisted dying.

My search for the truth about assisted dying began when I was invited to attend the HOPE anti-euthanasia convention in Adelaide, featuring speakers from around the world. I heard dire warnings about what was happening in Belgium, the Netherlands and Oregon – where laws to help people die already exist. I took careful note of their genuine concerns. Many months later – having taken off overseas to see if their warnings held true, and spoken to experts worldwide – I sat down with HOPE’s...

Of all the arguments against assisted dying, the most heartless I’ve heard is this: 'Suicide is legal. Why do you need assistance to do something that you can do yourself?' In this episode, we’re going to meet father of two, Lawrie Daniel. At 50, and stricken with MS, what does it mean to Lawrie to be told ‘suicide is legal – what’s stopping you?’

The repeated call by opponents of assisted dying is that the elderly and the vulnerable must be protected from coercion. In this, they are right – and there are many safeguards built into existing laws overseas which do exactly that. But what of the elderly described in this episode by two of Australia’s coroners: rational men and women from loving families – who, faced with an irreversible and painful decline into death, are deciding to kill themselves violently instead?

Assisted dying has no more committed opponent than the Catholic Church. They have thrown resources, and the full weight of their political influence, against it wherever it has been proposed … which is why the words of Sydney's Archbishop Anthony Fisher – one of Australia’s most senior Catholic clerics, and a man who commands the ear of many politicians – are worth listening to.

Ray Godbold is a palliative care nurse faced with terminal cancer – but he doesn’t want to die in palliative care. There's a lot that Ray knows about death –but what he doesn’t know is that his own death will turn out to be everything he was hoping that he and his family would be spared.

As Andrew spent a week watching the doctors and nurses of St Vincent's palliative care unit in Sydney go about their work, he noticed two things: the compassion and care from everyone as they helped people to die in often complex circumstances; and just as apparent, a deep resistance to the thought of assisted dying. Exactly how deep he didn’t realise – until he sat down to speak with the unit's director, Richard Chye.

Speaking with doctors in Belgium, the Netherlands and Oregon, Andrew learnt that in those places, palliative care and assisted dying are seen as things that go together – and assisting a patient to die may sometimes be the ultimate offer of help for those beyond the skills of even the most dedicated palliative care experts. Back home in Australia, the law forbids assisted dying. Without a law to protect or guide doctors and nurses, Andrew wondered: how does palliative care here deal with...

The success of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act – at 18 years, the world’s longest-running law of this kind – puts two things into sharp relief. Firstly, the increasingly desperate attempts of opponents to discredit it. Secondly, the truth they don’t want you to see – that this law has been working, and exactly as intended. How that law came to pass in such a religiously conservative country stands as a masterclass in public policy, and one that set the template other US states have since...