AS Australia takes its first steps in regulating voluntary assisted dying (VAD), experts say there are many lessons to be learnt from the Netherlands’ 25-plus years’ experience in VAD. In August 2019, 61-year-old Kerry Robertson, who had been living with breast cancer since 2010, was the first person to end their life under Victoria’s VAD laws, while on 3 September the Western Australian Lower House passed that state’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill . The Bill is now headed for the state’s Upper House. Parliamentary committees in Queensland and South Australia are also considering legislative reform to allow VAD. In a Perspective published online by the MJA , Professor Bregie Onwuteaka-Philipsen of the Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute and Professors Lindy Willmott and Ben White of the Australian Centre for Health Law Research, outlined ways in which the Dutch experience could inform Australian approaches to VAD. They focused on three […]