How a late-night parliamentary vote fuelled by dim sims changed voluntary assisted dying laws

Eight years after becoming the first Australian state to legalise voluntary assisted dying, Victoria had a more conservative scheme than other jurisdictions that followed.

Parliamentarians had watched family and friends die painfully, heard from constituents whose loved ones starved themselves, or had chosen to die on their own terms. In 2025, after years of advocacy, Labor and the Coalition granted MPs a conscience vote to remove barriers in an overhaul of the regime.

Glenn Mack (pictured) had earlier been knocked back from the state’s voluntary assisted dying scheme and decided to stop eating and drinking to hasten his death.

The 85-year-old was refused access because his specialist doctors were unable to say that his host of medical conditions would kill him within six months.

The Age sat down with Mack, sipping on a glass of rose at a pub in Trentham in central Victoria, the day before he started refusing food and fluids.

He died on July 6 after three weeks.

Three months later, Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas would introduce amendments to loosen the scheme’s restrictions.

In late-night and emotive debates, fuelled by dim sims, parliament amended the law to allow those with a 12-month prognosis to access voluntary assisted dying.

A “gag clause” that barred doctors from initiating conversations about assisted dying with their patients was also removed, and the bill further stipulated the minimum information that health practitioners who conscientiously object will need to provide patients.

The government ultimately accepted amendments to clarify which health practitioners and nurse practitioners would be able to raise voluntary assisted dying during discussions about end-of-life care. Parliament had heard concerns the bill, if passed without amendment, would have allowed podiatrists, optometrists and chiropractors to initiate the conversation.

Granting a conscience vote allowed for a more emotive and at times bitter debate.

Most Labor MPs from the Catholic-influenced SDA sub-faction had sought to block the reform and had referred to voluntary assisted dying as assisted suicide, prompting retorts from Thomas, Mental Health Minister Ingrid Stitt, and Pakenham MP Emma Vulin who is living with motor neurone disease.

“On a point of order, acting Speaker, sorry to interrupt, but I would like the member on his feet to stop referring to it as ‘assisted suicide’,” Vulin said.

The chamber had been brought to tears when Vulin, who will leave parliament after the November state election, made her contribution to the debate through text-to-speech technology.

“I may one day choose voluntary assisted dying,” she said. “It is not about giving up; it is about retaining agency over the most personal decision any person can ever make: how they leave this world.

“I do not know how my journey with MND will end, but I do know this: the knowledge that I may have voluntary assisted dying as an option gives me strength. It allows me to live with more peace, to focus on the moments that matter and to spare my loved ones from witnessing my prolonged suffering, which serves no purpose.”

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