Australia is a nation obsessed with productivity; it is seen as the only hope for the future by economists and the only solution to budgetary woes by politicians.
The most pressing concern relating to productivity – and one that has been threatening for decades – is the huge increase in the number of older Australians, with the associated increase in age-related disability and disease. As the Productivity Commission pointed out in 2011, this increase in the number of elderly Australians coincides with the decline in the number of informal carers.
It raises the uncomfortable question – who will look after us in old age?
The answer to this question is increasingly urgent, not only for its impact on the budget but also for the legions of Baby Boomers who must finally contemplate what happens to those who don't 'die before they get old'.
This heightened focus on end-of-life can be credited to the Baby Boomers' involvement with their own aging parents, and the experienced reality of life in nursing homes – a reality, mind you, that has existed for a long time, but which attains a new significance when it affects the loudest generation.
Not surprisingly, there's a distinct distaste for the status quo, and a desperate search for 'alternatives'.
It's nice to think that the solution will be found in an increase in the quality of care, but, as German sociologist Ulrich Beck notes, 'the very word "care" is dropping out of people's vocabulary'. It has been replaced by an idea of people as 'objects of medical intervention'. The very real fear, Beck writes, is that society will find a solution to 'indignity, dependence and isolation' of old age in the euthanasia movement, and embrace 'self-administered death as a release from over-prolonged life'.
Amidst this dangerous climate, the euthanasia movement in Australia is growing louder, selling itself as the compassionate response to old age and dying. After all, who would put up with old age if – as a recent comment on an economics website put it – you 'could simply buy a bottle of Nembutal at the local pharmacy and take a few pills to end it all in a dignified and peaceful manner'?
There is widespread support for the view that rational adults should have the freedom to decide whether life is worth living. On the face of it, euthanasia is simply an extension of the growing body of fundamental social rights.
The problem is that