The Greens Party is using its current grip on Australian politics to push for legal euthanasia while they have the chance.

Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is frightened of the Greens. They can end her prime-ministership anytime with about five minutes notice.

But JG has misgivings about euthanasia. She is not stupid. At present she is perching on the fence.

She fobbed them off at Channel 10 by saying she finds it “almost impossible to conceptualise how there would be appropriate steps and safeguards”.

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Full-time euthanasia campaigner, Philip Nitschke, wants her to make up her mind:

“Plenty of places, including Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and the US states of Washington, Montana and Oregon, have proved legislation is feasible.

“It isn’t good enough for politicians to fence-sit on such an important social and moral issue and to keep betraying their electorate for possible fear of a Christian backlash.”

You can picture him turning aside to spit on the floor after mouthing the word “Christian”.

PN is peeved. A television ad sponsored by his group has been banned because it encouraged suicide – which put it in breach of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice.

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It was a blunder to mention Belgium, Holland etc.

These places don’t have genuine Palliative Care services. Instead, they have so-called “integrative palliative care” which includes deliberately hastened death as an option — a contradiction in terms.

True Palliative Care regards dying as a normal process — its role being neither to hasten nor to postpone death, but to offer every possible physical, emotional and spiritual comfort to the dying.

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Real Palliative Care is a wonderful gift to the whole human race — not just to those who are dying.

Palliative Care is a protector of decency and compassion — in a world where those virtues are scarce.

Palliative Care was pioneered by Christians — notably Dr Cicely Saunders, in London, England (not Dr Nitschke’s favourite historical figure).

Euthanasia, on the other hand, is a great dis-service to the human race — a crime against humanity — and should be treated as such.