> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://goodoil.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Boom Times for the Smug Reapers - URL: https://goodoil.news/boom-times-for-the-smug-reapers/ - Published: 2026-11-06T20:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-06T19:59:59.000Z - Description: WA is barnstorming the League Table of Death. - Author: Lushington Brady - Tags: Health Well, it’s quite the boom time for the death buff. We’re not quite to the apparent end-game of *Futurama*\-style suicide booths on every corner, but they’re working on it. They’re offing kiddies and old ladies in Belgium, whether they like it or not. State-sanctioned suicide is rapidly rising up the league tables o’ death and nudging into the Top Five of Grim Reaper’s Greatest Hits in Canada. Victoria, having failed to kill enough of its citizens with lockdowns, is proudly showing off its ever-increasing uptake of medicalised death. Even WA’s getting in on the death party. And what a party it is. The Voluntary Assisted Dying Board’s latest annual report records 541 deaths in 2025–26, some 2.9 per cent of all deaths in the state. In the scheme’s first year, the tally was 192\. That is an increase of roughly 182 per cent in five years, and 1,764 West Australians have now been dispatched under the act. [The board’s outgoing chair](https://familyfirst.org.nz/2026/10/21/western-australias-assisted-dying-numbers-are-10-times-what-was-predicted/?ref=goodoil.news), **Dr Scott Blackwell**, said activity was “more than 10 times higher than predicted at implementation”. Ten times. Imagine a Treasury forecast that was out by a factor of ten. Heads would roll, inquiries would be convened and a minister would be ‘spending more time with his family’. Here, the same miss is presented as a triumph of public service. Even the ABC reports the figures with the breathless pride of a tourism board announcing record visitor numbers. Remember how we were sold this? Strict safeguards. Rare cases. Merciful exceptions for the dying. So let’s inspect the safeguards, courtesy of the board’s own numbers. The law demands nine days between a patient’s first and final request: a cooling-off period, so that nobody makes the last decision of their life on a bad Tuesday. As if deciding to shuffle off this mortal coil is like buying a car. Yet, even that period has been waived in 648 cases since 2021, more than a quarter of final requests, climbing to 29.1 per cent last year. One patient was dead a day after first asking. Less a safeguard, then, than a suggestion. Then there is the matter of the practitioners. Nine of them accepted over half of all first requests and eight conducted half of all first assessments, each of which attracts a tidy $478.50 fee. Twenty-one practitioners took on requests without completing the required training. A cottage industry of Doctors Death has formed, and, as with any industry, a few specialists have cornered the market, in something of a Grim Reaper’s Guild. Meanwhile, 333 patients, more than a quarter, lodged more than one first request, which looks suspiciously like shopping around until some obliging doctor says yes. As for coercion, the board assures us there wasn’t any. Not one of 1,077 first assessments found a patient acting under pressure. Remarkable, given that nearly a third of patients cited being, or fearing becoming, a burden on others. Apparently, a person who ends their life because they feel they’re a nuisance to their family is acting wholly freely. One wonders what the assessors would count as pressure. A hand-written note reading ‘Please die, Mum’? Maybe a stern talking-to, along the lines of, ‘You’re not fooling anyone, you know. You’ll be stone dead in a moment.’ The stated reasons are equally revealing. The commonest, at 74.8 per cent, was being less able to enjoy activities. Loss of autonomy and dignity followed. Inadequate pain control came in at a mere 39.7 per cent. In other words, this is not primarily about agony. It is about inconvenience and about a culture that has decided that a diminished life is a life not worth living. Nor is palliative care keeping pace. The number of applicants not receiving any at their first assessment jumped over 34 per cent in a year, from 124 to 167, and 154 of them had received none in the previous 12 months. Offer a man a lethal dose with one hand and nothing at all with the other, and then marvel at his choice. Eleven patients aged 18 to 39 were found eligible this year alone. Eligible for what, exactly? And the procedure itself isn’t always the peaceful drift into sleep the brochures promise. Nine euthanasia cases involved reported complications, including coughing, gasping and vomiting and one patient took an hour and nine minutes to die. Dr **Calum Miller** put it bluntly: > “Western Australia has become the euthanasia death capital of Australia; it really is totally out of control.” You would think the board might respond to its own findings with alarm. Instead, it recommends reviewing the requirement that patients be expected to die within six months, or 12 for neurodegenerative conditions, with a view to extending or scrapping it. It wants telehealth delivery, too, so that death can be ordered with the convenience of a pizza. And, naturally, more staff and more resources, because killing is their business, and business is good. Across the Tasman, New Zealand’s ACT is already queuing at the same slippery slope with Todd Stephenson’s amendment bill, which would swap the six-month limit for a vaguer ‘advanced, progressive condition’, and waive final consent for those who lose capacity. Western Australia’s experience shows precisely where that road leads. Safeguards, it turns out, matter most when somebody proposes removing them. New Zealand should not loosen a single limit without an honest and public discussion of where it leads. WA has already shown us the destination, and it is a very long way past ‘compassion’. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.**