Damned if I Do

by Philip Nitschke

  In the late 1990s it became clear there was a significant lack of coordination and communication between me, so often on the move, and our Darwin office, creating a number of dangerous situations. A crisis point was reached one day, when I received an agitated and desperate phone call in Sydney from a woman whose ill husband had just killed himself. She kept threatening to go the police, saying that Exit had told her husband to do this, and provided advice, yet I knew nothing about it. As it happened, he’d been in touch with the Darwin office but the information hadn’t been passed on to me. Our database just wasn’t capable of providing instant access within the organisation to details of every important contact. This crisis passed, and the police were never involved, but it showed me that there was a desperate need for Exit to make use of much better technology.

  Today, our records are not only encrypted, but database information is instantly available to all of the organisation’s small staff. The system is maintained for us by a professional company on a pro-bono basis. Their incredible work has saved us, so many times, from walking into ­trouble.2 It has been quite humbling that such expertise has been provided in this way.

  * * *

  In 1998, I relaunched my political career, standing as a candidate against Kevin Andrews in the Melbourne seat of Menzies. This time I worked closely with the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Victoria, which had so disappointed me when we were trying to defend the Northern Territory legislation. In this campaign, though, they gave me their full support. The $120 000 in donations stood as a record for funds raised for an independent candidate and showed the level of ­community support for voluntary euthanasia.

  On polling day, I received over 10 per cent of the ­primary vote. Many people who had previously voted for Kevin Andrews shifted their vote to me, and for the first time, Andrews failed to obtain an absolute majority. Preferences had to be counted. While the Liberal Party ultimately held the seat (it had previously been considered a safe blue-ribbon seat) no one expected this result. During the campaign, I met Kevin Andrews for the first time at a debate held in a Doncaster hall. We were sitting quite close to each other and exchanged a few civil words, but photographs taken at the time say it all. We were never going to be mates. The 1998 election result must have shocked him. But to my supporters and me, it felt like some small payback for the misery his Andrews Act had caused.

  By the new decade, Exit International was up and running, and I was experiencing life on the road. I was travelling extensively both in Australia and overseas, giving workshops, seeing patients, giving talks at conferences and ­engaging in debates. However, it was not until I met Fiona Stewart in 2001 that my life turned another corner, and with it, Exit’s entire modus operandi. Back then, Fiona, a sociologist, was regularly writing opinion columns for The Australian, The Age and Herald Sun newspapers, and was an ­emerging face of Generation X feminism. She had also recently founded a dot com start-up, the consumer complaints website NotGoodEnough.org.

  We met at Brisbane’s inaugural Festival of Ideas, at the Powerhouse, on the banks of the Brisbane River. At the time, I was still partnered with Tristan, and Fiona had been in a ten-year relationship with a Melbourne man, Michael. We were introduced at a planning meeting that was held shortly before we took to the stage for a debate titled ‘There’s no such thing as a new idea’. We were on opposing sides of the podium, with Phillip Adams as chair, and the event was broadcast live-to-air on Late Night Live on Radio National. By the end of the debate, Fiona and Lynne Spender (one of my team members) had changed sides, as neither agreed with the line their team was running. That night, Fiona and I started talking, progressing to the bar for a beer, and onwards throughout the rest of the festival. Now, more than a decade on, we haven’t stopped.

  Our relationship had a difficult beginning. I hesitated, refusing to tell Tristan what was happening. We had been in trouble for some time, mostly because she really wanted to have children and felt that time was running out. I had never had fatherhood ambitions though, and did all I could to avoid talking about the issue. She was hurt and disappointed and felt betrayed; this was the issue that finally drove us apart.

  Fiona is much more like me. She is feisty, outspoken and quite radical in her politics, although something of an extrovert, which contrasts with my shyness. On the night we met, Fiona was upfront about her lack of desire to have ­children. Dogs, yes, she said, kids, no. Indeed, 60 Minutes had just screened a story in which she featured as an ­example of a thirty-something professional woman who saw no need to reproduce in order to have a full and rewarding life. In August 2001, Fiona was living in inner Melbourne and, for the next eighteen months, that city was to draw me back time and time again. But it wasn’t easy. She came to Darwin for the first time late in 2001, but I wasn’t there to meet her. I was in London, trying (with a 60 Minutes crew) to get to meet Diane Pretty, a motor-neurone-disease sufferer who at that stage was the public face of the campaign for voluntary euthanasia in Britain. When I finally did get back to Darwin, Fiona came out to my rural shed, and this didn’t help at all. After all, she was from Melbourne’s South Yarra, and my place in Coolalinga was, well, pretty rough. Despite our fierce attraction, I wondered then and there if Fiona’s and my relationship could ever work.

  I took her bush, to see a different part of the Territory and to meet different people, in the hope that things between us would improve. Given her politics, I thought she’d be interested in Wave Hill and its history in the struggle for Aboriginal land rights, so we packed our camping gear and set off.

  It’s about 300 kilometres from Darwin, south to Katherine, and then another 500 kilometres southwest to Wave Hill. The road is sealed all the way, the legacy of the Territory beef indus­try, but it is a narrow, one-lane bitumen strip. From Katherine we pushed on to the isolated Top Springs pub, halfway between Katherine and Wave Hill. Stuck out in the middle of a mulga flat, it was a notorious bush pub, the one where I’d had my fight with David Quinn all those years ago.

  On that first trip we camped out, a short distance from the Dagaragu community. The place had changed enormously from when I was last there; the shed Jenny and I had lived in was long gone. There was a plaque to show where the famous shelter—the one that appears in all the photographs of the Wave Hill strike in the 1970s, including the ones with Frank Hardy, with the Gurindji sign over the heads of the people—used to be, and there was a small museum erected with some of the early photographs and other memorabilia of those days.

  Only a handful of the Gurindji people I’d known were still there but Mick (Hoppy Mick) Rangiari was, and we talked with him. He’d been one of the youngest of the original strikers, and the last one left. The conditions seemed as grim as they’d always been, and there were people sitting around in the dirt with their dogs, in much the same way as they had back in 1973. I wondered what Fiona would make of it all.

  I needn’t have worried. She coped with everything, including the humidity and the heat—and the January monsoon thunderstorms. Our mosquito net saved us from a fate worse than death. The trip was a great success and Fiona fell for the Territory and, thankfully, for me.

  She agreed to give Darwin a full-time go in early 2003. More than a decade on, she is my best friend and my lover, my sounding board, and my staunchest and most loyal confidant. I would be lost without her. Our impromptu wedding at the Stained Glass Chapel in Las Vegas, on 17 November 2009, was the best day of my life.

  TWELVE

  The courage of Caren Jenning

  I am going to end my life. I am not going to die in gaol.

  Caren Jenning to the author, September 2008

  In 2005, Caren Jenning was seventy-five years of age and in remission from breast cancer. She was a long-time Exit member and the informal coordinator of our Sydney chapter. Over the years, Caren often mentioned that she had various friends who wanted information about end of life drugs. While some of them joined Exit and came to worksho
ps for this purpose, Caren’s friend of forty years, Graeme Wylie, a retired Qantas pilot who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, said he had no time for this ‘Exit Club’, as he called it. However, by late 2005, Graeme’s health problems were spiralling out of control. He told those around him that he wanted to end it before he got to the stage where he couldn’t ‘wipe his bum or recognise Shirley’, his partner of more than two decades. Caren contacted me and said that Graeme wanted to go to Dignitas, the Swiss organisation that provides an assisted suicide service to foreigners. She asked if I could talk to him.

  Graeme applied to go to Dignitas, only to be rejected. I hate to admit that I did play a role in his rejection, but I felt I didn’t have much choice. At Dignitas’s request, I went to see Graeme at his home in Cammeray on Sydney’s North Shore. I could see why he wanted to die. He was in that terrifying period of knowing that dementia was setting in and being absolutely panic-stricken at the thought, but being too disorganised because of the dementia to do anything about it.

  In my report back to Dignitas, I stated that Graeme was affected by dementia but that he also had insight into his condition. He was quite confused on some levels when I ­visited him, but did know he wanted to die; he said it to me over and over: ‘I just want to die.’ He had already made two failed attempts to kill himself: first, with a drug ­overdose where he took non-lethal sleeping tablets, and then by using carbon monoxide in the exhaust gas of a lawn mower. Dignitas, though, has strict rules about the mental condition of people it admits to its program, and on learning of his dementia, they rejected his application.

  Caren, as Graeme’s close friend, was distressed as she watched his deterioration and soon decided that enough was enough. She arranged to go to Mexico to buy Nembutal for herself and for Graeme, including a spare bottle for another Exit member who helped pay for her trip. As promised, on return Caren gave one of the Nembutal bottles to Shirley. Shirley passed it to Graeme, who poured it into his glass. His dying words were: ‘Peace at last.’

  While Graeme got the peaceful death he wanted, he left chaos in his wake. The doctor who’d been called to confirm the death was suspicious and refused to sign his death certificate. An autopsy was performed, and the lethal drug was found throughout Graeme’s body. The question was immediately asked as to where the Nembutal had come from. Caren and Shirley had feared that this might happen and had concocted a cover story, with Caren saying her trip to Mexico had to been to visit her ailing sister, the 1950s Hollywood starlet Dana Wynter, in California. While Caren did visit Dana, the police were not convinced of her innocence. Over the next six months, the authorities tapped Caren and Shirley’s phones, and in Febuary 2007, both women were arrested and charged with assisting Graeme’s suicide. In a bizarre twist, neither woman was granted bail, so they spent a week in gaol at Silverwater in Sydney’s west. With their joint plea of ‘not guilty’, a joint Supreme Court trial date was set.

  At the trial preliminaries, I was informed that I would be interviewed, with the possibility I would be called as a prosecu­tion witness. The Crown prosecutor was Mark Tedeschi QC. He is a formidable advocate, who builds cases juries tend to believe. It’s not stretching things too far to say that controversy always follows him. To this day, he is the only New South Wales prosecutor who’s ever faced a legal tribunal over allega­tions of professional misconduct (of which he would later be cleared). Infamous cases in which Tedeschi’s conduct has attracted public criticism include Gordon Wood, Keli Lane and the 1990 prosecution of the 1978 Hilton bombers.1

  On 12 May 2008, I walked into the Supreme Court of New South Wales, planning to just sit there and watch until I was needed. I was quickly asked to leave, and discovered that a witness to be called is not normally allowed to hear the proceedings before giving their evidence. So, I missed the first few days of the trial, and was worried about just what Shirley would say and whether or not she would implicate me in Caren’s decision to obtain the Mexican drug. I’d had assurances from Caren that Shirley would not turn Judas, but the reports I was getting on the tactics of her QC, Peter Bodor, made me feel uncomfortable. Blaming anyone but Graeme for the mess he’d left Shirley in was understandable, but I did not want to become the sacrificial lamb. Despite a few tense moments though, Shirley was true to her word and avoided implicating others.

  When I was finally called to give evidence, Tedeschi focused on a meeting I’d had with Caren and Shirley one morning on Pier 1 in The Rocks in Sydney, and I was given a rough time. He pressed hard, relentlessly trying to get me to admit that I was instrumental in Caren’s decision to go to Mexico to source the drugs. As a witness, you’re at a real disadvantage because you can never make much of a statement. You are expected just to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to any question asked; embellishment and detail are unwelcome, especially when the prosecutor is trying to steer you in the direction he wants. Tedeschi kept pushing for an admission; I kept denying his suggestions. And he did make several blunders.

  The first was almost funny, and happened when Tedeschi handed me a copy of my banned Peaceful Pill Handbook. I handed the book straight back to him. Accepting it, he then read from the chapter about Mexico, saying something like, ‘From what you’ve written here, you must have known exactly what would happen when you discussed options with these women.’ I replied, saying I couldn’t answer that question, given that he was quoting from a banned book and I then looked at the judge, Mr Roderick Howie, for direction. His Honour asked if Mr Tedeschi had any privilege to use a banned book in the court room. Tedeschi looked blank, and looked at his junior, who also looked blank. A quick conversation about legal principles then took place and the trial seemed heading towards high farce. The jury were sent out while further legal arguments were made, with the outcome that the line of questioning based on information on Mexican Nembutal from my book was struck out.

  Just as I was feeling pleased with myself for having won that round with Tedeschi, court was adjourned for the weekend. When it resumed at 10 a.m. on Monday, the ground shifted from beneath us all.

  I distinctly remember sitting on the cold wooden bench outside Supreme Courtroom No. 2, in King Street, Sydney, waiting to be called to continue my evidence when people started to run backwards and forwards in an agitated way. Finally, I found the cause for all the excitement: Shirley had changed her plea to one of guilty of assisted suicide. She would tell me later she just wanted it over and was sick of watching as her experience in caring for an increasingly demented partner became fodder for the prosecution’s antics. However, Tedeschi, being the hard-nosed prosecutor he was, was having none of it and refused to accept the plea change. Evidence began to emerge about Shirley’s alleged lesbian relationship with a woman in Germany and her increasingly stressful time with the demented Graeme, and she seemed to have a possible new motive. Expert witnesses had begun suggesting that Graeme was too demented to make any decision about his future; Tedeschi joined the dots and attacked, arguing that Graeme had not suicided at all, rather that he had been murdered.

  All of a sudden, Caren’s world collapsed. Initially, Shirley had wanted to plead not guilty to the charge of assisting a suicide, to argue every point and tough it out. Her lawyers though had persuaded her that the wisest course was to plead guilty to this charge and try to get a lenient result. Now the women found themselves being charged with murder. Caren felt betrayed by the plea change and realised she was now part of something she could not control. From that day on, the two women sat at opposite ends of the wooden bench in the historic dock of courtroom 2.

  I don’t have much faith in the jury system. On the volun­tary euthanasia issue particularly, I’ve watched as panels of my fellow citizens are made to feel that without ­delivering a guilty verdict, they haven’t done their job. I saw it in the trial of Caren and Shirley, and I’ve seen it more recently, in Brisbane, when a naïve school teacher, Merin Nielsen, was found guilty of assisting in the suicide of his friend, Exit member
Frank Ward.2

  In June 2009, Merin helped Frank die, by going to Mexico and bringing Nembutal back for him. In return, Frank left his modest estate to Merin, something to which Frank’s family had agreed. Despite Frank having made his instructions, and the reasoning behind them, very clear, the jury decided that Merin was only helping Frank so that he might inherit, and found him guilty of assisting in Frank’s suicide. Justice Jean Dalton said she could see no reason for leniency and sentenced Merin to three years’ jail, with a non-parole period of six months. When sentencing, she said their relationship was about more than just ‘philosophical chats’ and that the fact that Merin was the sole beneficiary in Fred’s will was ‘relevant’ to the sentence he would receive. As I watched the sentencing I thought, Well who else would Frank leave his money to but his closest friend? And who else but Merin would be likely to help Frank die? Assistance and inheritance will commonly be linked, and to suggest that they shouldn’t be seems to me naïve.