Grace Tame: 'To my fellow survivors – it is our time', National Press Club - 2021

3 March 2020, National Press Club, Canberra, Australia

In April of 2010, I was battling severe anorexia. Truth be told, I still am.

This illness had nearly taken my life the year prior, and seen me hospitalised twice. Bone thin and downed in fine down hairs from malnourishment, I was picked on for the way I looked. My mum was eight months pregnant at 45. I was a 15-year-old student at a private girls’ school in Hobart.

I arrived later to discover the rest of my Year 10 classmates were attending a driving lesson off campus I had completely forgotten about. Lapses like this weren’t uncommon – I was barely there. One of the senior teachers saw me walking around aimlessly in the courtyard. He was very well respected, the head of maths and science at the school for nearly 20 years. He taught me in Year 9. I thought he was funny. He told me he had a free period and asked me to chat with him in his office. He asked me about my illness, I talked, he listened. He promised to help me, to guide me in my recovery.

As a teenager with no frame of reference, and thinking nothing odd of this, I told my mother about the conversation. My parents had a meeting with the school principal, requesting the teacher stay away from me. In (a) meeting I then had, I think to apologise to him for putting him in this position in front of the principal. I was told I had done something wrong.

Thus, the first seeds of terror, confusion, and self-doubt were sewn in my mind. Indeed, it didn’t make sense. In secret, he was adamant I still come to see him. To talk. My parents were against me, he insisted. I was not to tell them because they wouldn’t understand. Pregnant women, he said, were full of hormones. That must be why my mother and I were arguing.

He gave me a key in his office, where it was always music playing, and the same music always, Simon and Garfunkel. Over a period of months he made me feel safe. I was sexually abused as a six-year-old by an older child who told me to undress in a closet before molesting me. He told me he would never hurt me. Until he did. By way of a masterful re-enactment I didn’t see coming. With a closet. And an instruction to undress.

Most of you know the story from there. That is, how I lost my virginity to a 58-year-old paedophile and spent the next six months being raped by him at school nearly every day on the floor of his office. When I reported him to police, he found 28 multimedia files of child pornography on his computer. As per the lasting impact of and manipulative grooming and a four months after the abuse, I effectively defended him in my statement. I was terrified he would find out I betrayed him and he would kill me. He was two years in jail for maintaining a sexual relationship with a person under the age of 17.

Repairing myself in the aftermath of all this was not a simple, linear undertaking. For every step forward, there were steps back and to the side, and some almost off the edge. I saw counsellor after counsellor. But I also abused drugs, drank, moved overseas, cut myself, threw myself into study, dyed my hair, made amazing friendships, got ugly tattoos, worked for my childhood hero, found myself in violent relationships, practised yoga, even became a yoga teacher.

I starved, I binged, and I starved again. One of the toughest challenges on my road to recovery was trying to speak about something we were taught is unspeakable. I felt completely disconnected from myself and everyone around me. Many people didn’t know how to respond. That said, the ones who listened, the ones who were eager to understand, even when they couldn’t, made all the difference.

Still, the doubt lingered. How could I have been so stupid, as to not see what this man was doing from the outset? Was it my fault? Should I have known it was a lie when he said he learned more from me than any of his other students? Maybe I should have been more alarmed when he asked me if I knew where my clitoris was. It was when the perpetrator was released after serving 19 months for abusing me, correction, maintaining a sexual relationship with me as a 15-year-old, and then spoke freely to the media about how awesome it was, I realised we had this all around the wrong way.

Add the fact this man was awarded a federally funded PhD scholarship to the only university in my state. My mother was studying there. She soon dropped out because of his presence. In fact, he was put in student accommodation. Despite multiple reports to police by fellow students of his predatory behaviour, and once again convicted and jailed for his vulgar public comments during his PhD tenure, he was eventually awarded a doctorate.

After all this, it became quite obvious to me why child sex abuse remains ubiquitous in our society, while predators retain the power to get what they want, to objectify their targets through free speech, the innocent, survivors and bystanders alike, are burdened by a shame-induced silence.

I connected with groundbreaking fellow survivor and journalist, Nina Funnell. I needed to raise awareness and educate others about sexual abuse and the prolonged psychological manipulation that belies it. After months of recounting, retraumatising details, tearfully transposed by Nina, we discovered we were barred by section 194k of Tasmania’s evidence act, that made it illegal for survivors of child sexual abuse to be identified by the media, even after turning 18, even with their consent. Nina created the Let Her Speak campaign to reform this law. We were then joined by 16 other brave survivors who lent their stories to the cause. The law was officially changed in April last year, almost 10 years to the day from the beginning of my story.

It is so important for our nation, the whole world, in fact, to listen to survivors’ stories. “Whilst they’re disturbing to hear, the reality of what goes on behind closed doors is more so. And the more details we omit for fear of disturbance, the more we soften these crimes. The more we shield perpetrators from the shame that is resultedly misdirected to their targets. “When we share, we heal, reconnect, and grow. Both as individuals and as a united strengthened collective. History, lived experience, the whole truth, unsanitised, and unedited, is our greatest learning resource. It is what informs social and structural change. The upshot of allowing predators a voice but not survivors encourages the criminal behaviour.

Through working with Nina, finally winning the right to speak, and talking with fellow campaign survivors and countless other women and men who have since come forward, it has become clear that there is the potential to do so much more to support survivors of child sexual abuse to thrive in life, beyond their trauma. And more so, to end child sexual abuse. It is my mission to do so. And it begins right now. As a fortunate nation, we have a particular obligation to protect our most vulnerable. Our innocent children, and especially those further disadvantaged through circumstance, being part of a minority group, or geographical location. And there are three key areas that we can focus on to achieve this.

Number one, how we invite, listen, and accept the conversation, and lived experience of child sexual abuse survivors. You have heard me say it before, it all starts with conversation. Number two, what we do to expand our understanding of this heinous crime, in particular, the grooming process, through both formal and informal education. Number three, how we provide a consistent national framework that supports survivors and their loved ones, not just in their recovery, but also to disempower and deter predators from action.

So, what is it that we must do? First and foremost, let’s keep talking about it. It’s that simple. Let’s start by opening up. It is up to us as a community, as a country, to create a space, a national movement where survivors feel supported and free to share their truths. Let’s drive a paradigm shift of shame away from those who have been abused and onto abusive behaviour. Let’s share the platform to remind all survivors that their individual voice matters amongst the collective. Every story is imbued with unique catalytic educative potential that can only be told by the subject. Let us genuinely listen, actively, without judgment, and without advice to demonstrate empathy and reinsure it never was our fault. Further to this point, while I must express my unflinching gratitude for this new-found platform, I would like to take this particular opportunity to directly address the media with a constructive reminder – the need for which has become starkly apparent to me this past month.

Hosts, reporters, journalists, I say to you – listening to survivors is one thing – repeatedly expecting people to relive their trauma on your terms, without our consent, without prior warning, is another. It’s sensation. It’s commodification of our pain. It’s exploitation. It’s the same abuse. Of all the many forms of trauma, rape has the highest rate of PTSD. Healing from trauma does not mean it’s forgotten, nor the symptoms never felt again. Trauma lives on in ourselves. Our unconscious bodies are steps ahead of our conscious minds. When we’re triggered, we’re at the mercy of our emotional brain. In this state, it’s impossible to discern between past and present. Such is retraumatisation.

I cried more than once while writing this. Just because I’m been recognised for my story doesn’t mean it’s fair game anywhere, any time. It doesn’t get any easier to tell. I may be strong, but I’m human, just like everyone else. By definition, truths cannot be forced. So grant us the respect and patience to share them on our own terms, rather than barking instructions that take us back to your darkest moment, and ‘tell us about being raped’. The cycle of abuse cannot be broken simply by replaying case histories, we cannot afford to back track. Else, we’ll go around in circles, trapped in a painful narrative, and we’ll all get tired, both as speakers and listeners. We’ll want to switch off and give up. And retreat once more into silence.

On average, it takes 23.9 years for survivors of child sexual abuse to be able to speak about their experiences. Such is the success of predators at instilling fear and self-doubt in the minds of their targets. More so than they are masters of destroying our trust in others, perpetrators are masters of destroying our trust in our own judgment. In ourselves. Such is the power of shame. A power, though, that is no match for love. When I disclosed my abuse to another of my teachers, Dr William Simon, his absolute belief in me was the only assurance I needed to tell the police. It helped me recover a little of my lost faith in humanity. There certainly isn’t a single rigid solution. Solutions will naturally come in due course by allowing and enabling voices to be heard.

Certainly, talking about child sexual abuse won’t eradicate it, but we can’t fix a problem we don’t discuss, so it begins with conversation. Which brings me to my second point: from there, we need to expand the conversation to create more awareness and education. Particularly around the process of grooming.

Grooming – it’s a concept that makes us wince and shudder and as such, we rarely hear about it. To the benefit of perpetrators. While it haunts us, and we avoid properly breaking it down, the complexity and secrecy of this criminal behaviour is what predators thrive on. In turn, we enable them to charm and manipulate not just their targets, but all of us at once, family, friends, colleagues and community members, and this must stop. Our discomfort, our fear, and resulting ignorance needs to stop giving perpetrators the power and confidence that allows them to operate.

As a start, we should all be aware of what has been identified as the six phases of grooming, that certainly ring true in my experience. Number one, targeting. That is, identifying a vulnerable individual. In my case, I was an innocent child, but I was anorexic, with significant change happening at home. Number two, gaining trust. That is, establishing a friendship and falsely lulling the target into a sense of security, by empathising and assuring safety. For me, that is what I thought was listening to my challenges. Empathising with my situation, and providing me a safe space to retreat to when I needed it. Number three, filling a need. That is, playing the person that fills the gap in a target’s mental and emotional support. In my case, although I was surrounded by an incredibly attentive family and team of medical professionals, most of their support came in the form of tough love. The teacher thus assumed the role of sympathiser, telling me what I wanted to hear. Number four, isolating, driving wedges between the target and their genuine supporters. This involves pushing certain people away, but exploiting others. I remember studying the film Iron Jawed Angels in history. The main character is force fed, much like I had been. Aware of my distress upon seeing this, my history teacher quietly led me out of the classroom. I said nothing. But she took me straight to his office. Where she left me with him. Panicked, in tears. It wasn’t until many years later I questioned why she and other staff would take me to him when I was upset. Staff he privately mocked and referred to as ‘the menopausal virgins club’. He must have told them. Number five, sexualising. That is, gradually introducing sexual content as to normalise it. In my case, in conjunction with subtly explicit conversation, I was carefully exposed to material that glorified relationships between characters with significant age differences. There was one film in particular he made me watch, called The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the last line of which, ‘Give me a girl at an impressible age, and she is mine for life’.

And remember how I said Simon and Garfunkel was always playing? Their music was the soundtrack to The Graduate. He made me watch that too. It was, both literally and figuratively, The Sound of Silence. You know the lyrics. The vision that was planted in my brain, still remains, within The Sound of Silence. Number six, maintaining control. That is, striking a perfect balance between causing pain and providing relief from that pain. To condition the target to feel guilt at the thought of exposing a person that also appears to care for them. Abusers scare you into silent submission. At over six foot, he towered above me. He once told me a story about a friend of his who sought revenge on a woman by digging her eyes out with a spoon. He told me he killed people as a soldier. He’d also sit outside on my street at night in his car, to watch me undress through the window. I was already embarrassed by my shape as a young teenager in eating disorder recovery. I remember standing naked behind his desk after he had just raped me, and asking him if he thought I was fat. He looked me up and down and said, ‘You could do with some more exercise’. Like I was a dog. But he also told me I was beautiful. See, how it is all stiflingly, painfully complex?

But as we talk more about child sexual abuse, our lived experiences and what we know, our understanding of this premeditated evil will continue to develop. We need to warn our children, age appropriately, of the signs and characteristic behaviours, while educating how to report it, should it happen to them, or to those around them. This is a serious enough topic, unfortunately too common in occurrence for us to hope that kids know this. So I challenge our education system to look for ways to more formally educate our children. Because we know that education is our primary means of prevention.

And finally, to my third point, we need structural change. A national system that supports and protects survivors and deals with crimes in proportion to their severity. Let’s start by considering the implications of linguistics related to offences. Through Let Her Speak campaign efforts, we saw the wording of my abuser’s charge officially changed from maintaining a sexual relationship to a person under 17, to the persistent sexual abuse of a child. Think about the difference in the crime according to the language of both of these. Think about the message it sends to the community. Think about the message it sends survivors. Where empathy is placed, where blame is placed, and how punishment is then given. We need to protect our children not just from the physical, mental, and emotional pain of these hideous crimes, but from the long lasting sometimes lifelong trauma that accompanies it. Whilst national structural change is no small feat, nor is educating our children on the dangers and the complexities of grooming, it is work that needs to be done and we need to start somewhere.

Let’s start by reviewing our linguistics and agreeing between ourselves. We have eight different state and territory jurisdictions and eight different definitions of consent. We need to agree on something as absolute as what consent is. We need a uniform, state and federal, national standard definition of consent. Only then can we effectively teach this fundamentally important principle consistently around Australia.

Since I was announced as Australian of the Year just over a month ago, hundreds of fellow child sexual abuse survivors have reached out to me to tell their stories. To cry with me. Stories they thought they would take with them to the grave, out of shame for being subjected to something that was not their fault. Stories of a kind of suffering they had previously never been able to explain. Stories of grooming. I am one of the luckiest ones. Who survived, who was believed, who was surrounded by love.

And what this shows me is that despite this problem still existing, and despite a personal history of trauma that is still ongoing, it is possible to heal, to thrive, and live a wonderful life. It is my mission and my duty as a survivor and as a survivor with a voice to continue working towards eradicating child sexual abuse. I won’t stop until it does.

And so, I leave you with these three messages – number one, to our government – our decision-makers, and our policymakers – we need reform on a national scale. Both in policy and education. To address these heinous crimes so they are no longer enabled to be perpetrated. Number two, to my nation, the wonderful people of Australia – we need to be open, to embrace the conversation, new information, and take guidance from our experiences so we can inform change. So we can heal and prevent this happening to future generations.

Number three, and finally, to my fellow survivors – it is our time. We need to take this opportunity. We need to be bold and courageous. Recognise that we have a platform on which I stand with you in solidarity and support. Share your truth. It is your power. One voice, your voice, and our collective voices can make a difference. We are on the precipice of a revolution whose call to action needs to be heard loud and clear. That’s right. You got it. Let’s keep making noise, Australia.”

Brendan Nelson: '... at least they'll remember me in Australia', 'Tragedy & Triumph 1917', National Press Club - 2017

19 September 2017, National Press Club, Canberra, Australia

Australians all let us rejoice…for we are young and free.
We pause here ‘in the heart of the land they loved’, free and confident heirs to a legacy born of idealism, forged in self-sacrifice and passed now to our generation.
We do so a century from our nation’s most tragic, damaging year - 1917.
It was the worst of times.
It was the worst of times.
Barely a year later we emerged victorious - but inconsolably mourning 60,000 dead. Yet from this wrenching cataclysm, embittered, deeply divided - we remained true to our democracy.
We had our story.
We were Australians.
Our young nation’s innocence was brutally lost in the bloodbath at Fromelles and hard-earned victory of Pozieres in 1916.
The bitter conscription referendum rendered us a deeply divided people facing the new year of 1917.
The AIF began in the snow of Bullecourt and finished in the quagmire of Passchendaele, the cost - 77,000 casualties; 22,000 dead and missing.
We were three years into a war in which victory seemed an ever receding horizon. No solace to anguished families in humble homes where telegrams and letters spoke to suffering, death and lives given.
The harsh realities of British military leadership were revealed to the man who was witness to it all - Australia’s official war correspondent, Charles Bean:
“Bullecourt”, he said, “more than any other battle shook the confidence of Australian soldiers in the capacity of the British command”.
He saw the struggles of the ordinary soldier, men simply ‘flicked aside’.
Aghast, he watched in April the 4th Australian Division torn to pieces attacking into a hail of machine gun fire and German artillery at Bullecourt.
Of the 3,000 men from the 4th Brigade, 2339 were killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
In May, Bean returned to Pozieres where a mortally wounded Australian had asked him: Will they remember me in Australia?
Here he collected the first artefact for the Australian War Museum he had conceived - The ‘Centre way’ trench sign.
These were the sacred relics of triumph and tragedy, of heroism and bloody sacrifice.
As Bean searched amongst the detritus of the Pozieres battle, the Australian War records Office was established at AIF Headquarters in France. Birth had been given to what would become the Australian War Memorial.
The Americans joined the war in April, but not the battlefield for another year.
Russia was seized by a Bolshevik revolution. Lenin would rule by year’s end.
Prime Minister Billy Hughes left the Labor Party, splitting it asunder to triumph in an electoral landslide. Australians wanted a wartime leader.
Ireland’s independence revolutionaries stirred negative Catholic opinion led by Bishop Daniel Mannix.
Months of Industrial warfare broke out in August, 97,000 striking workers crippling transport and industry.
Hughes crushed the unions with sweeping powers. Cynicism and anger spread.
Recruitment stalled. Hughes ran a second pre-Christmas conscription referendum. Again, a majority of Australians voted No.
But it was the events in Europe that would weigh heaviest on any residual Christmas cheer.
One word from 1917 would describe inconsolable grief and mourning for an entire generation of Australians.
Hell on earth now had a name – Passchendaele.
The ‘suffering of Christ’ - and suffering it was.
This small Flanders village - lent its name to a series of battles that would epitomise the war of brutal attrition, of suffering inflicted on so many for so little.
For purists - the Third Battle of Ypres.
With the French army in exhausted turmoil, British operations shifted north into Belgium.
General Douglas Haig dusted off his plan to force the Germans from the Belgian coast.
His first objective was the strategically important Messines Ridge.
On 7 June, after months of tunnelling the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company detonated 1 million pounds of TNT at Hill 60, part of the coordinated, explosive prelude to the battle.
Captain Robert Grieve VC of 34th Battalion recorded the melee:
Suddenly Bedlam was let loose….impossible to describe the inferno. The earth seemed to vomit fire…. shaken as though by an earthquake – the air screamed shells and snapped bullets, above all was the roar of the guns, crackle of machine guns and the hum of aeroplane propellers.
The official photographer, Frank Hurley wrote:
Until my dying day, I shall never forget this haunting glimpse down into the mine crater on Hill 60 – three hideous, decomposed fragments of corpses of German gunners…. one tragedy of thousands
At the No. 2 Australian Casualty Clearing Station near Messines Ridge, 21 Australian nurses were told casualties would be light.
Within 18 hours, 2,800 patients were admitted.
Sister Mimie Procter wrote:
It was a nightmare….blood, blood, blood everywhere and suffering.
Sister Ada Smith:
Droves of dying men….nearly all head cases…. unconscious or else raving in delirium….
Recorded as one of the great set-piece victories of the war – Messines still inflicted 6,800 Australian dead and wounded. Two Victoria Crosses.
In July, Sister Alice Ross-King was blown into a blood soaked crater getting to the ward tent.
Trying to get a delirious patient into bed:
I had my right arm under a leg which I thought was his, but when I lifted I found to my horror that it was a loose leg with a boot and a putty on it…..one of the orderly’s legs had been blown off and landed on the patient’s bed.
The Passchendaele campaign began on 31 July.
The Germans had seven weeks after Messines to fortify their defences in the Ypres-Salient. They built concrete pill boxes, bloc houses, machine gun nests, barbed wire and fortified field artillery batteries.
Over 15 days in late July, the British fired 4.3 million artillery shells from 3,000 guns into the north, attacking on 31 July with a creeping barrage in front of troops with tanks – 27,000 casualties in a day.
Then it began to rain.
With the intricate drainage system of the Flemish lowlands destroyed, the battlefield was a quagmire.
The weather improved in early September as the five Australian Divisions were brought together in support of the imminent battles.
General Herbert Plumer’s ‘first step’ on the road to Passchendaele was the Menin Road.
Side by side, the 1st and 2nd Australian Divisions attacked in the centre flanked by 11 British Divisions.
It went to plan, the advancing barrage winning ground occupied by the infantry.
In less than three hours across a 12 kilometre front, all objectives were taken.
Another 5,013 Australian casualties, two Victoria Crosses awarded.
Clinical enough a description, but the ‘mad photographer’, Frank Hurley wrote:
The way was gruesome, awful beyond words….the dead and wounded lay about everywhere, the ground had the appearance of having been ploughed by a great canal excavator and then re-ploughed… through this the wounded had to drag themselves - and those mortally wounded pass out their young lives …
…the battlefield on which we won an advance of 1500 yards was littered with bits of men….. literally drenched in blood
Charles Bean described the men coming out of the line on the Menin Road:
…..looking like a dead man looks. A man of the 20th Battalion had a wound inside the thigh still bleeding…..passing, he grinned, “We got the bastards good on the second ridge”.
Plumer’s second ‘step’ was at Polygon Wood on 26 September. The 4th and 5th Australian Divisions attacked with the British.
The intensive artillery preparation and the ‘creeping barrage’ was the best ever. The infantry came in behind five layers of bombardment described by Bean as:
….roaring, deafening, it rolled ahead of the troops like a Gippsland Bushfire
Of the 55th Battalion Bean wrote:
Captain Cotterell led its advance, walking easily, cigarette in mouth, map in hand, behind him the thick line of “worm columns” each led by an NCO. All pillboxes were immediately outflanked……from some came whimpering boys, holding out hands full of souvenirs.
Walter ‘Jimmy’ Downing of the 57th battalion was in the thick of it:
…We were caught in the barrage…no time for caring as we stumbled past reeking bodies….. heads down as though in a hurricane of rain, not ripping steel.
…..men running, staggering, bent low…. dropped into shell holes, tautened faces…. crouching as they burrowed for dear life….on all sides the groans and wailing of mangled men.
A sergeant ran around his platoon…..the top of his skull was lifted from his forehead by a bullet, as on a hinge, and his body fell on two crouching men, washing them with his blood and brains
…bodies, living and dead were buried, tossed up, and torn fragments buried again…..the most awful sound, the muffled voice of a man buried under three feet of dirt, was heard…. dig me out!
….relieved, we were a pathetic band….all hysterical to varying degrees, the strong supporting the weak, we walked through Polygon Wood…
Sinclair Hunt of the 55th Battalion was a school teacher from Croyden, Victoria:
...though we suffered much….the capture of Polygon Wood was a most difficult operation brilliantly executed.
Hunt was killed a year later in France.
Polygon Wood came at a price – 5,770 Australians dead, missing and wounded. Two Australians were awarded the Victoria Cross.
The strategic, elevated Germen held Buttes was captured. Upon it today stands the memorial to the Australian 5th Division overlooking its men’s headstones beneath.
Plumer’s third step was Broodseinde Ridge.
Launched in teeming rain on 4 October, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Australian Divisions attacked with the New Zealand Division as part of the British offensive.
The Germans fought tenaciously from their pillboxes - machine gun fire, vicious bombing duels and hand to hand combat.
Private William Vincent fought in the 21st Battalion:
At 5 am a very heavy artillery barrage started and we went forward about 2 miles, our lads falling in dozens….we dug in for our lives and held it…we lost heavily.
But in Plumer’s bite and hold strategy, success had to be consolidated. Guns and ammunition had to be brought forward; units replenished with reinforcements, communication and supply re-established.
Although most objectives were achieved, mud made ‘hold’ impossible - another 6,400 Australian casualties. Two Victoria Crosses.
Morale was haemorrhaging.
Private Dudley Jackson, a Lewis Gunner with the 20th Battalion came out of Broodseinde with just 25 in his company and only two men left in his own platoon.
Victories at Menin Road, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde had cost Australia 17,000 men to advance 3.6 kilometres.
Then it rained, and rained, and rained.
On October 9 in conditions of utter misery and driving rain, with two British divisions the 2nd Australian Division attacked the slopes below the Passchendaele village - the battle of Poelcappelle.
It marked the month of brutal attrition.
With any hope of a breakout washed away by unrelenting rain, Generals Plumer and Gough told Haig they were happy to end it here.
Haig pressed on, determined to annexe the last piece of high ground for winter.
After Plumer’s headquarters briefing, Bean wrote:
They don’t realise how desperately hard it will be to fight down such opposition in the mud, rifles choked, Lewis Guns out of action, men tired and slow…
After five days of continuous rain, the battlefield was a morass. Mud crippled everything. Bogged tanks and guns were useless; weapons clogged; high explosive shells buried and guns simply sank when fired.
The attacking Australian battalions which had held the front lines since Broodseinde were walking dead - days under fire in appalling conditions, struggling to lay cables and tramways.
In Bean’s words, of those not suffering severe trench foot or melting away to the rear, many ‘temporarily deserted’.
When finally they attacked, the Australian battalion strength averaged just seven officers and 150 men. Yet into battle they went, 1200 men lost from heavy flanking enemy fire. Nothing gained.
Even more futile was the second Australian assault against the Passchendaele Ridge on October 12.
The 3rd and 4th Australian divisions would attack with the New Zealanders and British.
No tanks, aircraft and heavy artillery - nothing could move.
Entire field companies tried desperately to extricate guns from the mire.
Bombardier Frederick Corder of the 7th Australian Field Battery wrote:
…the guns had been bogged for three days until we put 26 horses onto each gun…. ploughing through mud up to the horses’ stomachs.
Even then, it could take 17 hours to get shells up to guns.
And yet, they kept at it, Bean writing of them:
Australian soldiers hung on to their agreed task – whether their own death or the destruction of the world should come.
The night before the assault of the 3rd Division, Corporal George Mitchell wrote a last letter to his family in Thebarton, Adelaide:
Tomorrow many men must go to their God. And if I die – I die.
We must all die. Best we can do - is to die with good grace.
The Anzacs advanced with almost no artillery protection - the 3rd Division sustained 3,000 casualties by nightfall.
One who ‘went to his God’ that day, was Corporal John ‘Jack’ Ison whose Sergeant Major later wrote to Ison’s father:
When I lost him I lost a friend….we went through Gallipoli, Egypt, France, Pozieres, Belgium, the Somme and again at Ypres together….I miss Jack as much as my own brother. I know it is an awful thing to part with one’s son….but you have no idea of the troops’ suffering…
…It really is a mercy from God to take us….at times I have asked God to take me from this life.
The New Zealanders advanced into a thick belt of uncut barbed wire on the Bellevue Spur, torn to shreds by deadly machine gun fire spewing from German pillboxes.
Lt G M Carson of the 33rd Battalion recounted his battle:
On the night of the 11th we marched off at 6.30 pm and walked until 5 am on the morning of the 12th….we had lost men like rotten sheep…
…we attacked at 5.25am and fought all day, at times bogged up to our armpits….lots drowned
Sergeant T. Berry tried to save a man up to his neck with a chain of rifles:
We heard screaming from another crater....he went down gradually….begging us to shoot him. But we couldn’t …who could shoot him?
We stayed with him, watching him go down in the mud.
Private Bert Fearns of the 2/6th Lancashire Fusiliers described conditions:
……our whole battalion was moving up this single duckboard track. As it got dark you had to make sure to keep close to the fellow in front as the track meandered around the lips of shell holes.
…shells started coming in, bunches of men got separated…. falling off the boards and shouting….we were not to stop; if one man stopped we all stopped.
You could hear those poor blokes calling out from the darkness….pitiful….mud like wet soap….we knew the poor devils would die….
We met a party of pack mules coming…..the track was meant to be one way….the poor things were shot by our officers to clear the path.
We just kept going, hour after hour.
Finally, we took shelter behind a big concrete pillbox (the left hand one at Tyne Cot Cemetery) and I fell asleep on my rifle….I didn’t care if I lived or died; a bullet would have been welcome.
…..I was woken by an explosion….in a cemetery on the edge of the railway cutting; I just emptied my rifle into a dark mass of men.
I then crept into a pillbox and fell asleep – on the shoulder of a dead German officer…. next day I was awoken by a voice:
“You the Lancashire Fusiliers?” - well piss off! We’re Australians here to relieve you”.
Lieutenant Wade Fisher of the 42nd Battalion was 23 years old. Assigned to relieve the ‘Manchesters’, he went ahead of his men:
I got to one pillbox to find it a mass of dead….I passed on to one ahead and found about fifty men of the Manchesters. Never have I seen men so broken or demoralised, huddled up close in the last stages of exhaustion and fear.
Fritz had been sniping them all day and accounted for fifty seven – the dead and dying lay in piles.
Fisher and his men went back in again on October 13:
We got up to our positon somehow….the fellows dropping out unconscious along the road. They have guts….
We found the line yards behind where we had left it, shell stricken and trodden ground thick with dead and wounded
…some of the Manchesters were there, seven days wounded and not looked to.
My men walked over to them….and gave all their food and water - all they could do.
That night my two runners were killed sitting next to me….I was blown out of my shell hole twice, so shifted to an abandoned pillbox.
....twenty-four wounded men inside, two dead Huns on the floor….the stench was dreadful.
The images of Frank Hurley and Hubert Wilkins came to exemplify the entire campaign.
On 12 October, Frank Hurley took the most tragically poetic photograph of his career at the Ypres-Roulers railway cutting:
Every twenty paces or less lay a body. Some frightfully mutilated, without legs, arms and heads, and half covered in mud and slime….we pushed on….. shells….bursting all around….ten or so telephone men - all blown to bits.
Under a questionably sheltered bank lay a group of dead men. Sitting by them in little scooped out recesses sat a few living, but so emaciated by fatigue and shell shock, it was hard to differentiate.
The exhausted and demoralised Anzac Divisions were finally relieved on October 18 by the Canadians who made the final assault on Passchendaele.
They clawed forward to capture the Passchendaele Ridge on 6 November.
For Haig, no more could be achieved in Flanders. His break-through had failed – miserably.
After three months the British line advanced 8 kilometres, only to expose it to German artillery. British losses stood at 275,000 dead, wounded and missing.
Thirty five Australians had been killed for every metre of ground taken.
Nine of 61 Victoria Crosses awarded, were to Australians.
Barely five months later, in three days the Allies lost Passchendaele and all the ground won in the Third Battle of Ypres.
Mounted on the German concrete blockhouse at the centre of the Tyne Cot cemetery today, is the cross of sacrifice. Amidst manicured lawns and 12,000 graves, including those of 1369 Australians, it bears a plaque:

This was the Tyne Cot Blockhouse
Captured by the 3rd Australian Division
4 October 1917

A world away in the Middle East, the Anzacs fought a vastly different war.
The Turks had effectively been driven out of the Sinai Peninsula and seaward approaches to the Suez Canal.
But they held a fortified defensive line running from Gaza near the Mediterranean Coast towards the town of Beersheba, 45 kilometres inland to the South East.
Any allied advance into central Palestine was blocked.
Two costly assaults in March and April 1917 failed to capture Gaza.
Craving a fresh offensive, General Sir Edmund Allenby arrived to command the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.
An artillery and naval bombardment of Gaza would mislead the Turks into expecting a frontal assault.
Meanwhile, a flanking move against Beersheba presented the Turks with a feint, but would be the main attack.
The dramatic charge by the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba on 31 October was the climactic opening to the 3rd Battle of Gaza.
On the morning of 31 October, 3 British Divisions supported by 100 artillery guns attacked Beersheba. The well-fortified Turks resisted ferociously, slowing the Allied advance to a standstill.
Mid-afternoon it was obvious that the town had to be taken before sunset or face failure for lack of water.
Beersheba’s 17 wells were deep.
Allenby instructed General Harry Chauvel to take Beersheba.
Chauvel ordered Brigadier General William Grant’s 4th Light Horse Brigade “straight in”.
The NSW 12th Light Horse Regiment would take the town with the relatively untested Victorian 4th.
In lengthening late afternoon shadows, one of history’s great cavalry-style charges was about to take place.
But these were mounted riflemen - no swords or lances.
Some slung rifles over their backs, riding bayonet in hand. Others couched rifles beneath arms, bayonets fixed, stock braced against the thigh.
Their mounts were mostly ‘Walers’ – hardy, stocky, sure of foot and able to carry heavy loads long distances. The tired horses were desperate for water.
Six kilometres from Beersheba, hidden from the Turks by a low ridge across a front of 1100 metres, 800 Light Horsemen formed up.
By squadrons in three lines, 300 to 500 metres apart, they were ready.
Saddle-worn, overloaded and parched, the horses began to fidget, tossing their heads. They’d caught the excitement.
At 4.30 pm they moved forward at a slow trot.
Cresting the ridge, the formation tightened and began to canter. A kilometre on they were in a gallop, 5 metres apart.
Two kilometres from the town, it was on - a reckless, headlong charge down the long gentle slope to Beersheba.
The thirst crazed horses pinned back their ears and flared their nostrils, eyes widened, heads outstretched and mouths frothing, tails flying.
Turkish rifles, machine guns and artillery opened fire. Bullets twitched the horses’ ears. Horses and men at the front fell.
Expecting the Light Horse to stop and dismount to attack, the Turks held most fire until too late.
As the first wave approached the trenches, the Turks opened up with everything including grenades.
The official historian, Henry Gullet described the Light Horse sweeping over the deep, wide trenches like ‘steeple chasers’.
As they did, Turks slashed at the horses’ bellies with bayonets.
Some Australians dismounted and fought in savage hand to hand battles. Others rode on into Beersheba.
By nightfall the town, wells, reservoirs and ammunition dumps were captured and horses watered.
The Australian Light Horse had ridden not only into Beersheba, but to history.
The charge captured the war weary world’s imagination.
Gullet wrote:
The enemy was beaten by the shear recklessness of the charge, rather than by the very limited fighting powers of this handful of Australians.
One soldier said:
It was the horses that did it; those marvellous bloody horses.
Grant proudly told his men:
(This is) the greatest cavalry ride in the history of warfare
Victory had cost 31 Australians dead, 36 wounded and 70 horses dead.
The capture of Beersheba turned the eastern flank of the Turkish defensive line. Gaza fell to the British on 7 November as the Turks withdrew to Palestine.
It is tempting, human beings that we are, to settle for the broad brushstrokes of history.
Our comfortable lives breed easy indifference to individual sacrifices made in our name, devotion to duty and Australia.
Trooper Robert Morley was killed in the Charge.
A 26 year old farm hand from Taralgon, on reading the Gallipoli casualty lists in 1915, he enlisted with his brother Charlie.
Buried the day after the charge, a grave marker plate was made from an old tank by his Warrant Officer, Jim French.
His widowed mother, Sarah saw five of her children die at home during the war.
She had already given five of her sons to the AIF.
George had been killed at Pozieres, Robert at Bersheeba. Edward died of wounds at Bullecourt while Archie, severely wounded, returned to Australia.
Charlie returned home on compassionate grounds in 1918.
Sarah chose the epitaph for Robert’s headstone at the Bersheeba war cemetery.

GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN
HE LAID DOWN HIS LIFE FOR HIS FRIENDS

As the Morely tragedy unfolded, Passchendaele shattered the Seabrooks in Petersham, Sydney.
William and Fanny Seabrook had given their three eldest sons, George, Theo and William to the AIF.
On the 20th of September 1917 – one hundred years ago, in the battle of the Menin Road, the 17th Battalion attacked near the village of Westhoek.
Lieutenant William Seabrook was hit by a phosphorous shell that killed or wounded the full section of the platoon he was leading.
In the early hours as William was stretchered from the battlefield, George and Theo were both hit by a single artillery shell - killed instantly.
George was 25 and Theo, a year younger.
William died a short time later. In the breast pocket of his tunic was a photograph of his mother, Fanny. The fragment that killed him had gone through the photo.
He was 21 years old.
One day, one family, three sons – all dead.
George and Theo’s bodies were never found. Their names are on the Menin Gate Memorial to the missing in Ieper (Ypres). Two of 6,191 Australians so named.
At her kitchen table, Fanny Seabrook penned William’s epitaph for the grave she would never see in the Lijssenthoek cemetery:

A WILLING SACRIFICE
FOR THE WORLD’S PEACE

Despairing, she wrote to the authorities about Theo and George:
….if you could explain to me we would be much obliged….. losing three sons in one battle…we are heartbroken.
In a later letter to her member of parliament:
Having given our three boys as a sacrifice to the country…. I will never recover….my husband is a complete wreck…I have put my property up for sale….there is no other way. Mr Seabrook has been raving about our three boys and has delusions….please pardon me for telling you all these things, but I have no one to confide in.
In 1928, Fanny Seabrook was among the 1 million Australians who clogged the streets of our towns and cities to glimpse William Longstaff’s painting, Menin Gate at Midnight.
That was the closest she and they would ever get to the dead son, husband or father.
In May 1928, the friend of an Australian mother, inconsolably grieving her missing, only son wrote asking for a photograph of the Menin Gate:
…his mother is very old and feeble and it would give her great …comfort, to know her son’s name is inscribed among those heroes and is not forgotten….. He was all she had.
Years later, Charles Bean wrote:
….many a youngster when he was hit out there at Passchendaele… in his last few minutes of life, when he knew that the end had come….thought: “well….at least they’ll remember me in Australia”.
And we do.
The daily Last Post Ceremony at the Australian War Memorial is our offering, to give meaning where there is none.
This simple gesture, including reading of the life, love, service, suffering and loss of just one of them, is our national tribute.
It is an expression of loss, suffering and love reaching into us all.
Pilgrims bound by a single, reverent emotion pause with awkward humility as stillness descends.
The Last Post sounded in the commemorative area, cloaked by the Roll of Honour, arrests the soul.
The silence that surrounds it is the most powerful sound heard.
In that silence, I always look up to the names of these young lives - silent witnesses to the future they have given us.
I am reminded that we are all equal in death.
I am reminded that we are Australians, that there are truths by which we live that are worth fighting to defend.
As the doors of the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier close, we are stirred by the most fragile yet powerful of human emotions - hope.
We are all driven to believe in a better future. Sustaining that precious belief, we honour them best by the way we live our lives and shape our nation.
Sarah Morley and Fanny Seabrook, in their despair and inconsolable grief, asked, ‘why?’
In the tragedies of 1917, the Seabrook brothers, Robert Morley made their ‘willing sacrifice for a better world’ and ‘the love of friends’.
A century on, they ask of every Australian, are we prepared to make our sacrifices for others and for a better world?
In reflection Bean wrote:
Wherever they fought – the Australians were sustained by a belief in their worth.
We are Australians defined less by our constitution than we are by our values and our beliefs, the way we relate to one another and see our place in the world.
We are shaped most by our triumphs and our failures; our heroes and villains; the way we have endured adversity and how we will face adversities coming, responding to new, emerging and unseen horizons.
From this worst year, we emerged with a greater belief in ourselves and a deeper understanding of what it means to be - Australian.
For we are young, and we are free.

Andrew Denton: 'Watching my father, Kit, die remains the most profoundly shocking experience of my life', National Press Club - 2016

10 August 2016, National Press Club, Canberra, Australia

I’ve come here today to try and light a fire.

Let me strike the first spark by telling you the story of 90-year-old South Australian Eileen Dawe. As she was dying of cancer last year, Eileen kept a diary. Despite her clearly-stated wish to die she was forced to endure 17 painful weeks until the disease finally took her. Hoping to hasten nature’s course she began to starve herself to death. In her diary she wrote “My country’s laws decree ‘Death by a thousand cuts for me’”. 

If you've ever dieted for a week you know how unpleasant that is. Imagine a month of it. Or more. Weaker and weaker, with all the unpleasantness of starvation PLUS the symptoms of her cancer. Weaker still, and still not dead. 

How can our laws allow such a thing? Not just allow but insist on it. And why – despite polls which consistently show Australians overwhelmingly support a law that would have helped Eileen to die humanely - has no Australian parliament responded to the public will?

I’m going to come back to that, but first a quick rundown of how I get to be standing in front of you today. The two-times failed Gold Logie nominee now deeply engaged in what is literally a life and death issue.

Watching my father, Kit, die remains the most profoundly shocking experience of my life.

He was 67, and though clearly dying of heart failure, and obviously in great pain, dad was assisted to die in the only way that Australia’s law then (and now) would allow: He was given ever-increasing doses of sedatives, to settle the pain.

When your heart fails, fluid backs up in your lungs and you spend all day, every day, fighting for breath. Its like waterboarding - trying to suck air through a damp mask, drowning and being revived again. Of course Morphine couldn't relieve his distress. Not his and not ours. He never got a high enough dose to actually kill him. The images of those final days will never be erased.

That was 19 years ago. In the years since, whenever I’ve talked about it, I’ve been struck by how many respond with similar stories about people they love dying slowly, in pain, and, and sometimes terror, while being denied proper medical help.

So 18 months ago I set out to discover why good people are being forced to die bad deaths.  

I travelled to places where laws to assist dying have been operating successfully for many years… to Belgium, The Netherlands and Oregon.

I discovered that, contrary to what I had heard in Australia, it IS possible to construct laws with strong safeguards and protections.  I discovered that after up to 20 years living with these laws, they have strong and widespread public support; that the fears have not been realised. There is no slippery slope.

I discovered families profoundly grateful that, thanks to these laws, people they loved had been offered a choice, and the reassurance of control, over what would, otherwise, have been cruel, lingering deaths.

Perhaps most significantly of all, I discovered a golden rule that applies the world over:  And that is most people do not want to die.  They will do just about anything to stay alive, to be with family, to celebrate a grandchild’s birthday, to wake up and marvel at the beauty of a sunrise.

Take Oregon, where the number of people legally helped to end their life is less than 0.5% of all deaths annually. By law they must be dying of a terminal illness to be prescribed life-ending medicine. Yet nearly 40% of them choose, in the end, not to take it.

People give up only because the suffering or the daily loss of dignity they experience every day means they that for them there is, indeed, something worse than death.

I documented this journey of discovery in a podcast series called Better Off Dead -- 17 episodes in all, culminating in a call from Bob Hawke for Australia to introduce assisted dying laws.

It’s still available freely online but what’s changed since I launched the series earlier this year is that both Canada and California have enacted their own voluntary assisted dying laws. Meaning there are now over 100 million people in the world who have full choice about what happens to them at the end of their life.

None of them Australians.

It’s not that we lack the desire: polls show support for voluntary euthanasia in this country consistently runs at over 70 pc. It’s not that we lack the wit - I mean we’ve done it before. It was Australia which enacted the world’s first assisted dying law.

Many of you will remember - the Northern Territory, 20 years ago, and the first man to use it was a 66-year old Darwin carpenter called Bob Dent, dying from prostate cancer.  Both his testicles had been removed, he’d lost 25 kilograms, wore a catheter and leg bag and, as he said himself, couldn’t get a hug in case his ribs cracked.

Under that law, Bob and 3 others got the release they so desperately wanted – but in less than a year, the Howard government overturned not the law itself, but the law which permitted Territories to make such laws.  Just to make sure. 

“One of the most effective political campaigns in recent history” is how Fairfax’s Michael Gordon described it at the time. “It is also the story of a network - all the principals are Catholics - its influential connections, its single-mindedness and the tactics it employed”

A network which kept its profile so low …”as to be almost subterranean”. This, Gordon wrote, was “an integral component of the strategy”

We’ll come back to those subterranean forces. As I have discovered – they are still with us, working against the clear popular will for assisted dying laws. Using the old, crude but sadly effective weapons of denial and deception.

But first, let’s look at the consequence of their work. Let’s face the truth about what’s actually happening across our country in the absence of such laws. The Damage Done – as we’ve titled this book – describes the landscape with shocking clarity.

The daughter whose dying mother beseeches her to end the pain … who actually picks up the pillow, and hovers above that loved face .. but reels away, unable to go through with it.  We can name that daughter: she was TV journalist Tracy Spicer.

The grandfather so wracked by late-stage cancer he writes a farewell message on his “TO DO TODAY” pad before hanging himself on the clothes line behind the house.  His name’s Ken. Here’s the note. The son who found his body has Downs Syndrome.

A woman dying of Motor Neurone Disease, desperate for release but too ill to fly to a jurisdiction with kinder laws “It’s so much worse than I imagined”, she scrawls on a blackboard, and asks her friend Elisabeth to make sure these words are seen. Her own contribution to law reform.

Just 3 of the 72 testimonies within. Written by the dying and their loved ones; detailing trauma and suffering on a staggering scale.

These testimonies come from people aged 14 to 100 and from all walks of life. They represent almost every Australian State and Territory. They are blue collar, white collar, devoutly religious, avowedly not. The diseases they have faced are mostly cancer, but also MS, Motor Neurone Disease and other medical horrors.

What brings them together is the cruel way they all suffered – or suffer still, with descriptions such as “akin to torture” and “like a horror movie”. What strikes the reader are the repeated expressions from those left behind of shock, anger, and helplessness, sometimes reaching back decades.

Perhaps bravest of all are the testimonies from doctors and nurses, some of whom openly admit to committing the crime of assisting a patient to die. The trauma many of them have had to deal with in the face of their patients’ suffering is palpable. The guilt others still feel because the law forbade them from helping, just as keen.

Had the abuses, cruelty, and harm inflicted by our laws, and so vividly captured in this book, happened within one institution, our politicians would surely have acted on them long ago.

But because they have happened in many places – palliative care wards, nursing homes, general hospitals, people’s houses – and because each has been a private tragedy, they have been invisible. Ignorable. Deniable.

What is undeniable is that desperate people take desperate measures. And here we turn away from anecdote and private pain to the formal findings of the cross-party Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into End of Life Choices, the most extensive inquiry of its kind ever held in Australia, which reported in June this year. And which mirrored the anguished testimonies listed here.

It found repeated examples of inadequate pain relief and of deep suffering beyond the reach, even, of palliative care. It found doctors breaking the law and relatives being put on trial to relieve the torment of their patients and loved ones. Most shocking was the testimony of Victorian Coroner, John Olle, who detailed the horrific ways in which desperately ill Victorians were – are -  taking their own lives to end their suffering.

His evidence rocked the Committee, and was so distressing the Coroner had to collect himself three times while speaking – including the case of a 90-year-old man with cancer who killed himself by repeatedly firing a nail gun into his head and chest. Coroner Olle went out of his way to stress that these were people without a history of mental illness, from loving families, faced with the slow, ‘irreversible decline’ of chronic disease.

He said his office saw no way of preventing these deaths, quoting directly: 

“To my knowledge the people we are talking about have made an absolute clear decision. The only assistance that could be offered is to meet their wishes, not to prolong their life”

He estimated the number of elderly Victorians dying in this way - by suicide to escape the ravages of disease - at 1 a week.

Faced with such evidence, the Committee found that maintaining the status quo was unacceptable and this was a clear case for law reform.

Its recommendation, by a majority of 6-2, was that voluntary assisted dying - with strong safeguards - be introduced as another option at the end of life.

How, you might ask, can all this evidence – all these experiences, all this torment– not lead to a change of the law in this country? How can we turn our backs on what we know is happening, this terrible and widespread suffering?

Well, let us see how it happened last time. 

~ - ~ - ~

The story of how the Northern Territory law came to be repealed by Parliament bears repeating, because the forces that stopped it then are still in play.

The joint operation was led on the Liberal side by a young Kevin Andrews – a leading member of the conservative Lyons Forum, dubbed by some the “God Squad” – who worked in tandem with rising Labor star Tony Burke.  Only 25 and not even in the Federal parliament, Tony was an ambitious young foot soldier with the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Union.

They were supported by a grouping of conservative politicians, from both parties.  Their campaign was also given significant extra-parliamentary support from two wealthy and well connected Catholic businessmen.

Looking back now, two things are striking.

First is that on the questions that are most fundamental to how we live, love and die, religious belief trumps everything.  This is the theocracy hidden inside our democracy.

Second is that what Kevin Andrews and Tony Burke engineered was an outright denial of the will of the people of the Northern Territory, as expressed through their elected representatives.

It’s an issue where denialism is still rampant today. Denial of the public will. Denial of the evidence.

I learned first hand how this works when I attended an international conference hosted by the HOPE anti-euthanasia organisation in Adelaide last year. Convened by a one-time senior officer of the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide, the conference heard a lot about how to influence politicians. This was how former New Hampshire legislator Nancy Elliott, spelt out the tactics that had worked for her in the States.

“When you have lots of arguments,” she said, “if one argument gets blown out of the water, you still have more, and each argument will reach somebody else”

For instance, one way to oppose assisted dying is to suggest it is a threat to disabled people. I'll explain why this is untrue later, but as Nancy enthused: “Right now the disability argument is really kicking it. It's very powerful. Will it always be powerful? We don't know. Two, three, four years from now that may have holes kicked in it, just for different reasons, so we have to be flexible.”

Citing elder abuse and suicide contagion as other possible arguments, she went on to say: “You only have to convince legislators that they don't want this bill. You don't have to win their hearts and minds; all you have to do is get them to say, ‘Not this bill’, and then you have got your win”

I call these tactics FUD….Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Sow one seed of FUD and you can reap a harvest of political inaction. Just scare the hell out of people. Without ever engaging with the evidence accumulated over 20 years in countries with assisted dying laws.

And here it is: ONE, the majority of the people who access these laws overseas are dying of cancer, and are in the last weeks, or even days of their lives.

TWO, the groups most in need of protection from abuse under these laws – the elderly and the disabled – have faced no increased risk under them.

THREE, these laws have not adversely affected the relationship between patients and doctors but in fact, its opposite.

And FOUR, that there is a powerful palliative effect in simply giving people the means of ending the horror. Some sense of control. Even if they choose not to use it.

This evidence is overwhelmingly accepted by the people, medical professions, media, courts, and parliaments in the places where these laws exist.

If you aren’t even going to proceed on the basis of evidence, what are you doing? You’re engaging in a deliberate strategy of denialism and the propagation of myths.

Myths that have been planted in the minds of many as the truth because, at face value, they sound plausible. I went to test them.

Myth 1. The slippery slope.

The idea being that, once you write a law to assist people to die, there is no way of controlling it. Let me take that face on. It’s such a potent and alarming proposition, I searched assiduously for credible evidence of it in countries with assisted dying laws - and found none.

Nor did the Victorian Committee, which travelled overseas to the same countries to speak with doctors, medical and legal experts, palliative care specialists, disability rights groups, and opponents of these laws, to see how they were working. Instead, they found:

 rigorous safeguards, monitoring procedures and high levels of compliance sitting within robust regulatory frameworks focussed on transparency, patient-centred care and choice. 

Instances of assisted dying are rare, they reported, and assistance in dying is, in the vast majority of cases, provided to people in what would otherwise be the final weeks of their lives. 

They concluded: We found no evidence of institutional corrosion or the often cited ‘slippery slope’. 

Neither did the Quebec Select Committee before them, which spent two years on its own investigation before recommending for a law on assisted dying. It reached the same conclusion as Victoria: no slippery slope … and tiny numbers of people using the law.

The numbers? In The Netherlands, according to official data accepted by their Parliament, those assisted to die comprises less than 4% of all deaths each year. In Belgium, it’s less than 2%. And in Oregon, remember, it’s less than half of one percent.

In all three places, after decades of operation, public support for these laws is in excess of 80%; opposition under 10%. All these numbers have been stable for many years.

So let’s say it clear, and move on: no slippery slope.

Myth 2. No law can be written to safeguard the vulnerable.

The most frequent dog-whistle used by opponents of assisted dying. The insinuation that those most vulnerable in our society, the elderly and the disabled, will be coerced to die under these laws because they have become a ‘burden’.

As Archbishop, Anthony Fisher, so cleverly put it at a public debate last year:  Putting granny out of her misery so easily becomes putting granny out of ours.

As with the slippery slope, there is no credible evidence from overseas to support this. Rather, there’s a mountain of widely accepted, publicly available, peer-reviewed, evidence to disprove it.

Representatives of peak elderly and disability groups who I spoke with in Belgium, The Netherlands and Oregon reported no abuse – or threat of abuse – to their members in all the years these laws have operated.

Australian palliative care physician Dr Linda Sheahan used her 2012 Churchill Fellowship to explore how these laws work overseas. Not an advocate for assisted dying - but an advocate for an informed debate about it - Dr Sheahan concluded:

The Slippery Slope in terms of risk to vulnerable groups has not been demonstrated by the data.

Why? Because once you understand how these laws work you understand how they protect the vulnerable. More on that later.

Myth 3. If things get bad doctors will help you anyway.

They might and, as the Victorian Committee found, some Australian doctors do. I suspect many of us in the room know such cases. All these doctors are liable to prosecution and some -  for ethical or legal reasons - refuse to take the risk.

And if they do help it must be done covertly. Which results in a terrible irony, the very situation anti-euthanasia campaigners seek to avoid. People despatched in secret - for who knows what motive? No supervision. No record. No regulation.

That is the current status quo. Patients have no right to insist on relief from their suffering. Doctors have every right to refuse. Its not only dangerous and murky, but also deeply unfair. Because, while the person in bed 2a may get that extra morphine, the person in bed 2b may not.

And what if the person in bed 2b is you?

Why should any of us be put at this risk?  No one is protected. Not the doctor and not the patient. That’s why we need laws, and open, transparent decisions. 

Myth 4. Powerful drugs and palliative care can eliminate pain and distress at the end of life.

Australia has one of the best palliative care systems in the world. We should be proud of it. Any serious proponent of assisted dying supports their work and agrees they should be better resourced. But all the resources in the world won’t address everybody’s suffering and Palliative Care Australia knows it.

In their own words they “cannot relieve all pain and suffering even with optimal care”. Their statistics, collected every year from 106 palliative care units around Australia, prove it. The Victorian Inquiry found the same.

This is not to criticize their work. The numbers of people truly beyond their help are small. But they exist. And their suffering, as recorded in this book, is savage. This is the reality of modern medicine. Yes, it can keep us alive longer. But it can’t always treat what comes with that.

It is also a statistical fact that those who might seek assisted dying aren’t all in hospital. Some are struggling to cope in nursing institutions and old-aged facilities. Others at home. In his evidence to the Victorian Inquiry, Coroner Olle stated clearly that many of those whose suicides he recorded, were people ‘unlikely to qualify for palliative care’

And, of course, there are others suffering with long-term, incurable illnesses, such as advanced MS and Motor Neurone Disease, whom no amount of palliative care will adequately help.

As to the argument made by some doctors that ‘powerful drugs at the end of life can treat all pain’: It’s a medical sleight of hand. True in most cases, but not in all. Here is Professor Richard Chye Head of Palliative Care at St Vincent’s Sacred Heart, Sydney:

I’m not going to say I'm going to control everybody's physical pain … because there will always be some patients who will have pain that is not controlled … but I also make sure that I tell patients ...  I am going to help you live with that pain’.

But pain is only part of the story. Because the relevant word here is not ‘pain’, but ‘suffering’.

I don’t want to force you to sit through a litany of symptoms that can create suffering but they include panic brought on by suffocation, delirium, nausea and mental anguish.

Sometimes they overlap. Often they are compounded by multiple side effects from multiple drugs. The option most usually taken when they can no longer be controlled is palliative sedation - being put into a coma.

For many patients and their families this is perfectly acceptable.

But not every patient wants to die in a coma while their family watches on. And it neatly sidesteps the reality that this option is a response to suffering has already happened. Suffering that may have lasted days, weeks, even months.

And if this was your mother, your sister, your father, would that be enough? Would you want them to be ‘helped to live’ with that suffering - or should they be offered the chance to escape it? What would you want for yourself?

Everyone I spoke to in palliative care, whether they believed in a law or not, acknowledged the existence of ‘bad deaths’. Patients who they ‘wish they could have done more’ for.

And in these hardest cases no one is spared. As one palliative care physician told me:  The dying are the witnesses to their family’s pain just as the family are witnesses to theirs.

~ - ~ - ~

The leadership of Palliative Care Australia opposes a law for assisted dying. This opposition is more than purely medical. Almost 60% of Australia’s palliative care services are provided by the Catholic Church. Their core ethos is to ‘neither prolong nor hasten death’.

Yet the conversation within palliative care is slowly changing, partly due to the research of Dr Sheahan. Her study of practices overseas show that in places where these laws exist palliative care services have actually strengthened.

Significantly, the Victorian Inquiry recommended strongly in favour of increased resources and funding for palliative care in conjunction with an assisted dying law.

It also highlighted the words of the ‘father of Australian palliative care’, Professor Ian Maddocks, who said:

Rather than fighting a rear-guard action, I suggest the proponents of palliative care join forces with advocates of assisted dying, and with mutual respect and dialogue ensure that laws are framed with a care and precision that allows no abuse and promotes best outcomes.

He’s right. The aims of palliative care – to alleviate suffering and make possible a ‘good death’, for the dying and their families – are also the aims of those who seek a more compassionate law.

It is important, in writing that law, that palliative care be brought to the table.

~ - ~ - ~

And then there’s disability communities, with their own unique concerns and divided opinions.  

Some strongly oppose assisted dying. This comes from their lived experience of being viewed as having lives of less value. I have no doubt this experience is genuine.

Others are strongly in support. They want the same choices available to them as for anyone else.

Both rightly demand to have adequate safeguards in place so that a person is never pressured into ending their life. They, too, must be heard when writing a law.

~ - ~ - ~

So what might that law look like?

Based on those that have been successfully written overseas, it would have three bedrock principles:

To access it, you must be a mentally competent adult. This excludes children or those with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Your request must be voluntary.

You must suffer from a physical illness. This excludes purely psychiatric suffering.

At a minimum, you should be diagnosed with a terminal illness. This is defined in Oregon as “an incurable and irreversible disease which will, within reasonable medical judgment produce death within six months". Though some, like myself, would argue against a time limit because some conditions have a longer prognosis but are nonetheless intolerable.

For example: There is a strong case for a law that will also help those suffering from chronic, degenerative illnesses such as MND and MS. The suffering which can last months or years in these conditions may be, in some ways, greater than that of an illness such as cancer.  Almost half of the cases listed by Coroner Olle fall within this definition.

Before excluding them we have to ask ourselves ‘is that fair?’ If not, I would argue that the criteria for acceptance be an “irreversible and incurable physical condition which is unbearable to the sufferer”, a broader law closer to those in Europe and Canada.

The gates someone has to go through to qualify are the same in either case. They are many.

The first gate is you and your natural aversion to being dead. Only you can ask for assistance. And only if you are of sound mind.

The second is to convince two doctors, independent of each other - at least one of whom practices in your disease - that your symptoms are either terminal or irreversible, incurable, and unbearable.

As in the Netherlands, the first consultation should be without the family, so the doctor, usually your GP, can determine if this is, indeed, your considered wish.

The third gate is that a request for assistance to die must be put once in writing - independently witnessed - and twice orally.

The fourth: both doctors have to explore all treatment options with you, including palliative care.

The fifth gate is that should either doctor consider that any psychological disorder is impairing your judgement they will refer you to a psychiatrist, as happens in Canada, California, Oregon, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Once your primary doctor is satisfied you have met all the criteria, she will then write you a prescription for life-ending medicine, which you can drink.

Having received it, you have to complete a form attesting this is your decision and you fully understand its consequences. This to be included in your medical record.

All of which leads to the final gate: Again, you.

Only you can decide to drink the medicine. As Oregon shows, many choose not to. You can rescind your request for it at any time.

If your disease means you can no longer swallow, a doctor may legally inject you.

Your written requests and medical record, both doctors notes and, if required, the psychiatrists’, all go to the Coroners office and also a committee of review. In the Netherlands this consists of a doctor, lawyer, and ethicist. Both bodies have the power to call in doctors for questioning and to refer their conduct to police for prosecution.

That is what a law for assisted dying would look like. Not a license to bump off granny. A carefully written law you can access only if you have an extreme medical condition and which protects doctors from prosecution should they follow strict criteria.

I want to emphasise that what I'm proposing is a law to make legal a practice that’s already happening in Australia. But happening - as the Victorian Inquiry found - “without regulation, without support, without transparency or accountability, and from the evidence received, sometimes without consent."

~ - ~ - ~

In Australia right now, if you are dying and wish to end your suffering, by law you are allowed to commit suicide, with all the darkness and trauma that entails.

Also by law, you can opt for a slow exit, refusing treatment, including food and water, even if its life sustaining. This can take days, even weeks, and was described to me by a senior palliative physician as psychologically painful, both for the person going through it and their loved ones watching on.

How extraordinary is this, to live in a society where it is legally and ethically acceptable for a dying patient to endure a slow, tortuous death by dehydration and starvation – or to end their life violently and alone … yet it is legally and ethically unacceptable for that same dying patient to choose a quick and painless end to their suffering.

Yet this is the position that the Church and the AMA continue to lobby for. Not their constituencies, surveys suggest - only 29 pc of Australian doctors are actually members of the AMA; a majority of Catholics polled support assisted dying laws.

But their well-connected hierarchies are not for turning.

And those most affected by the power of these vested interests – the elderly, the sick, the grief-stricken, the traumatised – are, often, those least capable of pushing back. It’s an unfair fight.

So I have formed an organisation to fight for them. It’s called Go Gentle Australia. Our aim is to bring awareness to the suffering that is happening in our community and to galvanize that 70% of public support so that politicians can no longer ignore it.

We are being supported in this by people representing many groups –  doctors, nurses,  palliative care, cancer support, the disability community, the elderly, the legal fraternity, and politicians from all parties.

We don’t argue for a ‘right to die’. Death is not as a right. Death is a fact at the end of life.

We do argue for the right to have a choice about what happens to us at the end of our lives. Not to be coerced, when we are at our most vulnerable, into cruel and avoidable suffering.

Our first priority is to get a law properly debated – on the evidence - within every State parliament. Our second is to get a sensible and compassionate law passed. To stop this damage.

We have received financial backing from a number of organisations and some of Australia’s most respected business names. We’ll be saying more about them in due course, but I would like to mention one: Peter Joseph, Chairman of the Black Dog Institute and former Chair at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney, who is here as our guest and has offered this statement:

"It's simple: a good life includes a good death. Just as we should live free from needless suffering, so we should die. In my opinion the suicide rate in this country would drop significantly if assisted dying was seen as part of assisted living ". 

We are also working closely with a key medical group that officially supports an assisted dying law. Significantly, the one that see the suffering of patients daily and up close: Australia’s nurses’ union, the ANMF.

But we are under no illusions about the behind-the-scenes power, and deep pockets, of those who oppose reform.

This book is the first part of our campaign. We have also created this print ad. It’s full page and we can’t afford to run it, so this might be the only time it’s seen. But we’d be delighted if someone would like to run it for us.

~ - ~ - ~

The Damage Done is not intended as a critique of Australia’s palliative care services or the dedicated doctors and nurses who give of their best. Rather it reveals what happens despite their efforts.

It is intended, however, as a rebuke to those politicians who have been derelict in their duty these past two decades, when 28 attempts have been made in different State parliaments to pass an assisted dying law. Not one has got to a stage where even the detail of such a law could be debated.

By failing to properly examine the claim that ‘no safeguard can be devised to protect the vulnerable ‘, our politicians have failed, instead, to protect the people they represent.

After all, who could be more vulnerable or in need of protection than the dying and their families?

There is every reason to believe the damage and despair found unacceptable by the Victorian Inquiry exists across Australia. And will likely increase as our population ages.

That harm, and the testimonies collected here, ask hard questions of us.

Simply opposing laws on moral or ethical grounds is not an answer to these questions. Denial and manipulation of evidence is not an answer. This is a serious public health issue.

That elderly Australians are killing themselves violently at the rate of more than one a week, because there is no other way they can be legally helped to end their suffering, is a national tragedy.

And for all those who do end their lives, how many others lie in nursing homes and hospitals, wishing they could be helped, mercifully, to do the same?

How many patients are dying without enough pain relief because doctors are terrified to give them more?

How many doctors, confronted by the suffering of their patients, are being forced to break the law, knowing they have no protection?

And how many Australians are suffering years of chronic, unrelenting pain … while their families are scarred with trauma and guilt because they can do nothing to help the ones they love when they most desperately need it?

In the words of Coroner Olle: There is a cry for help.  It may be muted, it may be veiled, but it is there nonetheless. And they all know it - including doctors.  They know that this person is screaming for help but no one is going to answer this call.  Not in this society.  

I believe that no compassionate society would knowingly support this.

We are a compassionate society. But we have not been aware of the scale of the damage.

That’s why I’ve come to light a fire.

A fire for all the people in this book and also for those whose stories we do not yet know. I invite them to come forward and make it bigger.

I invite those doctors and nurses who’ve seen this suffering, and know it to be wrong, to add to this fire and light it in their hospitals and their communities.

I invite all state coroners to build it higher by joining Coroner Olle in casting light on how our elderly are dying.

Let us make a fire so big no politician can ever again ignore it.

To those whose beliefs instruct you that only God can decide how a human being should die, I urge you, step aside. May your beliefs sustain you and those you love, but do not impose them on the rest of us.

To those doctors for whom ‘doing no harm’ means that you cannot, in conscience, participate, I urge you, too, to step aside.  Do not stand in the way of other doctors who, in equally good conscience, see leaving a patient to suffer when they are beyond meaningful medical help as doing more harm.

Step aside and let no one question your right to do so. The very core of these laws is that they are voluntary. For doctors and nurses as much as patients.

And to those doctors who are sitting on the fence because you think it’s all being taken care of, or because you don’t understand how these laws work, educate yourselves.

The safeguards written into these laws protect, not just your patients, but also you.

To the politicians of South Australia, who, for the 14th time, have a Bill before them – and to those of Victoria, Tasmania and NSW, who can expect new Bills within the year – I urge you: Do your duty.

Debate these laws properly. Understand what they are. Look at the evidence from overseas about how these safeguards work. And read this book.

Enough copies have been printed for every State and Federal politician in Australia.

Should you continue to stand in the way of a law for assisted dying, let it be in full knowledge of the suffering taking place in our community because of that refusal.

Write this law. And right this wrong.