(NEWSHUB NATION THEME) Today on Newshub Nation ` a doctor who euthanises people in Canada answers questions ahead of this week's vote in our Parliament. Washington Post political correspondent Jenna Johnson on who will take on Trump. And nothing in the Budget for electric vehicles. Really? We investigate. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2019 Kia ora, good morning. I'm Simon Shepherd, and welcome to Newshub Nation. Taliban leaders were present in villages raided by SAS troopers, according to Hit & Run co-author Jon Stephenson. This contradicts eyewitness accounts by Afghan villagers in his book published in 2017. Co-author Nicky Hager says the new information just adds detail to the book's allegation that the SAS killed civilians. Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier is to investigate Oranga Tamariki's processes for taking newborn babies as one of three inquiries announced following a lockdown at a Hawke's Bay hospital last month as the agency tried to remove a baby from its teenage mother. The full findings and recommendations of the six-month inquiry will be made public. And there was speculation this week that Air New Zealand CEO Christopher Luxon will enter National Party politics in time for next year's election. The 48-year-old announced his resignation from Air New Zealand on Thursday. He says he will take the summer off to consider his options. Well, the euthanasia debate is progressing, with the End of Life Choice Bill expected to have its second reading in Parliament on Wednesday. A similar bill was passed in Canada in 2016, and it's estimated that 8000 people have had a medically assisted death there. Dr Stefanie Green is president of the Canadian Association of Doctors and Nurses who provide euthanasia services there, and she joins us now. Thank you for your time this morning. Thanks for having me. First of all, you're a doctor, so how do you reconcile pro-euthanasia views with the spirit of being a doctor? I think it's absolutely consistent. No matter what we say at our medical school interviews, most of us go into medicine to help people, and this is another form of helping people at a really vulnerable and terrible time in their lives. So what do you say to the New Zealand Medical Association's stance that they say euthanasia in any form is unethical? I think that's naive, to be perfectly honest. I think that when someone is suffering intolerably at the end of their life and we have a legalised medical service that allows for us to help them in that moment, when a competent adult asks me to help them, I feel like I'm helping them by doing that. And you have done that roughly 150 times, you personally have been involved in medically assisted death, or MAID, as you call it, in Canada, haven't you? Yes, I've had the privilege of helping 150 people end their life. Is it a privilege, is it? Oh, it's a sincere privilege. It's a very intimate time for someone. It's a privilege to witness them through that journey, to support them through that journey, to offer them a care that they're desperate for and to be able to grant them that and to help them do it in a very comfortable way, it's a huge privilege. Does this normalise the process? Does it normalise the idea of assisted suicide? I don't think 'normalises' is the right word. I think accepting it as another form of care at the end of life, as another end-of-life care option. There are many, and it is only one, and only 1.5% of all Canadians' deaths are chosen to be in this way. It's a very small number still, but I think it's important. Let's talk about your experience. In the people that you have assisted, has it always been peaceful? In the people that I have assisted, it's always been peaceful. Absolutely, because it's a controlled procedure that I am there to make peaceful. And how long does it take? Well, the majority of assisted deaths in Canada are actually by clinician-administered medication, which is what I'm doing. And so, technically, from the initial administration to the end of the procedure and the end of heartbeat, it's, on average, about 10 minutes. Most of it is clinician assisted. Do people actually self-medicate? There is the option in Canada legally to self-medicate. We've had very very few ` I'd say probably under 20 cases in 8000. I've been involved in one. It takes a little bit longer. It's also peaceful, but it's a different process. Because there is that concern here that it doesn't always go according to plan and that the death is not peaceful. Have you come across this at all? I have actually not come across that at all. The protocols in Canada we use are based on the Dutch protocols. They're very very effective. We lobbied very hard with my group CAMAP to have the proper medications available so that we could have a lesser time to dying and a more comfortable experience, and so it's been good. Okay. Why shouldn't high quality palliative care be the answer to people who are at the end of their life? High quality palliative care is essential. I think that we need to lobby for that. I'm all in favour of that. I'm very lucky where I live. I work very well integrated with palliative care teams. It's essential for our patients to have that. But we all know that palliative care cannot address every single event, and there are patients that suffer at the end that palliative care cannot help. Right, so it's true that palliative care cannot ease every point of suffering. Of course not. Okay. Every palliative care doctor will tell you that, and if they don't say so, they're being disingenuous. At what point do you say you can't help someone? If someone comes to you and they have very poor quality of life, but it's not an irreversible disease or symptom, what do you say to them? That's probably the hardest thing of what I do. We have very strict eligibility criteria in Canada that must be rigorously found to be true, and if somebody comes to me suffering at the end of their life with a chronic disease or a chronic pain that they've had for many years but they don't meet all of our criteria, I can't help them. That doesn't mean they're not suffering. That doesn't mean I don't want to, but I have to work within the law and so I need to explain to them that I believe what's happening to them is horrible, but I'm not legally allowed to help them, and I have to help them try and find other resources. You're the president of the Association of the Doctors and Nurses that help provide these services. Do your members need counselling? We offer support systems to our members. There's a number of different regional resiliency programmes. We do find, though, and early Canadian data is showing a little bit to our surprise that the attitudes and experiences of people providing this care has actually been fairly positive. People find this work incredibly rewarding. Patients are incredibly grateful for the care, and most people actually don't need that support. It is available for them. We encourage a lot of self-care, a lot of support within collegial groups, and we have a national group where we're in touch with each other all the time to support each other, which is essential, but it's been well absorbed. Because the New Zealand Medical Association here has a stance against euthanasia, I mean, did this issue at the time of debate when it's coming through drive a wedge through the medical profession? I don't think so. I think that the Canadian Medical Association has had a neutral opinion about this in an effort to support all 85,000 members of our association, because there is, obviously, a wide variety, but I don't think there was a wedge. I think there was a bit of a fear at the beginning. A lot of physicians didn't understand what this was or how to do it. A little bit scared to step into that space. The very few who did step forward banded together very quickly in our organisation, and we've built a really strong network of support for each other. So I don't think 'wedge' is the right word. It's three years on. No law is perfect, I guess. Do you believe that Canada's law could work better? Actually, I have to say that Canada's law is working really really well. There's obviously people on both sides of the debate saying it's not liberal enough or it's already too restrictive. There's lots of debate. But it's quite rigorous. The eligibility criteria have stood for three years. There's no rollback, there's no location locally, provincially or nationally looking to expand that. It's holding well. I think that there's a number of safeguards in place that are holding, and I think there's absolutely no evidence of any sort of misuse. There's been no charge of any clinician. Okay, so you say that the safeguards are in place. In particular, what are the safeguards that you support that are in place? There's a number of safeguards in place. Whether I support them or not we could talk about another day. But a patient needs to give consent both previously when they have a written consent. They actually need to give consent at the moment of the death. So it has to be the patient themselves. There's a 10-day waiting period reflective to think about their decision, to discuss it with family and have other opinions involved. There's lots of safeguards. There's many more. You talked before about the legislation being reasonably stable, but there is debate in Canada at the moment about whether to increase it, and there have been reports on whether mature minors should be accessible. I'm really glad you asked me. This is a misrepresentation of the facts of Canada. There is absolutely, in no jurisdiction in Canada, any current move to expand our eligibility criteria. Let me make that very very clear. Including mature minors. So if you just give me exactly 30 seconds, it used to be that there was a blanket ban on assisted dying in Canada. The highest court in our country carved out an exception where that could be legalised, and then the government legislated a law which is more restrictive than that, which is our current law for MAID in Canada. There is current debate. There are two court challenges challenging the restricted law to put it back to the High Court's definition of criteria, and whether that does or doesn't happen, it was yet to be seen. But other than that, there's no expansion of any criteria. The issue of mature minors, which has been raised in your media, is an issue which has been discussed well before our law, during the law, and currently there's a group of academics that have written a report about the issue of whether... Actually, the report is a collection of international data about the issue of mature minors and euthanasia. It makes no recommendation to government, and there's no government anywhere considering expanding our law to include mature minors at this time. So you believe that this has been misrepresented by anti-euthanasia advocates over here? Absolutely. Okay. What about our law? Have you had any experience or have you looked at our law and do you see any problems with it, our proposed law? I'm not going to comment on the New Zealand legislation that's been proposed. I think that there is a lot of similarities, from what I've read, to the Canadian law. There's also some significant differences ` most significantly, I believe that there's going to be a move towards making it restricted to terminal illness with the prognosis of six months. It's very very different to Canada. In Canada, it's what? In Canada, one of the criteria is that the natural death of the patient must be in what's called the reasonably foreseeable future. And that is a bit of a vague term that required some time to get used to interpreting. We now have a better idea, but there's nowhere about terminal illness or a particular time. Would it make it easier for you if you had those kinds of restrictions that are proposed here? No, I don't think so. I think that would be... I think the idea of terminal illness in six months is very very restrictive and really cuts out a significant group of people that are suffering intolerably. And those kinds of prognoses are often wrong, aren't they? They are. We're not very good at that. Okay. What about a couple of other issues that get raised here. What about the issue of coercion, that somebody is vulnerable and in a vulnerable state and they don't want to be a burden to their family and are coerced into electing this? Have you seen that? I actually haven't seen that at all. I think it's a bit condescending to people to tell them that they can't make up their own mind. It's part of my job to ensure that there is no coercion ` both external or obvious coercion or even subtle coercion. And I always speak to patients privately and alone and have a conversation with them. I take that very very seriously. But every physician every day in their practice talks to patients about capacity and consent and coercion. They don't use those words, but that's exactly what they're doing. So when people tell me that I'm challenged to do that properly, I think that's a little bit insulting, and I certainly do know how to do my job. Okay, and one last question. So since it's been in place, about 8000 people up to the end of last year have taken advantage of this legislation. Has there been an increase, a jump in numbers as they years have gone past? You're talking about 1.5% of the deaths in Canada being assisted. Is that a jump? Has it been going up? Well, it's been going up because basically to use kind of a vulgar analogy, there's a new product in town. It takes time for people to understand it's available, it's legal and it's available in their place and how to access it, so of course the numbers are going to increase slowly over the first couple of years. This is exactly what happened in Europe. The numbers are exactly what we expected in the first couple of years. It's still very little. It's still about a third of what's happening in the Netherlands. I do expect we're going to see an increase still in Canada. I don't think we've plateaued yet, but we're getting there. Okay. Dr Stefanie Green, thank you very much for your time this morning. Thank you. If you've got something to say about what you see on our show, let us know. We're on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Our Twitter panel this week is Josiah Tualamali'I and Laura Tupou. They're using the hashtag #NationNZ. Or you can email us at... The address is on your screen right now. But still to come, we digest the week's political news with our panel Emma Espiner, Alex Penk and Laura Walters. Plus, two people with terminal diagnoses with their views on the End Of Life Choice Bill. Welcome back. Anti-euthanasia advocates are planning to go to Parliament this week for the second reading of the End Of Life Choice Bill. One will be Vicki Walsh, who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer almost eight years ago and has so far defied the predictions. I talked to her at her Palmerston North home. I was diagnosed with brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme ` it's a cancer that begins within the brain ` and I was given 12 to 14 months to live. It's known as the Terminator? It is indeed. When I googled it for the first time, that's exactly what came up ` the Terminator. It was very frightening. So what effect did that have on you? I think when you're first diagnosed with something like that` It's the first time I'd ever been diagnosed, so I can only speak from my experience, but I think you're in a lot of shock. I think you're viewing your life very fast and very slow, almost like there's a movie going on and you're part of it. And it goes on around you, but you're sitting there and trying to piece everything together, because there are a lot of random thoughts that are going through your head. Did that push you somewhere? Did that push you into a dark place? Not initially. Initially there's a lot going on, and you are exhausted. I had brain surgery and I recovered from that and went on to have chemotherapy and radiotherapy together. That was really exhausting; utterly exhausting. So exhausting that I couldn't lift my head up. And I was huge from the steroids, so I doubled my bodyweight and couldn't pull myself out of bed. I couldn't wipe my own bum. My husband had to lift me out of bed, on to a wheelchair, take me to the toilet. So there were a lot of things that made me feel degraded. But then I realised that this was all done with love. Like, my husband was very caring about how he did everything, and that gave me hope and stopped me from being scared, I guess. Because it was very scary. If you were presented with an opportunity to end your life then, do you think you would have taken it? Not initially. In terms of ending my own life, I did have a go. I didn't go through with it, but I just decided one morning. And it was actually as I was getting better. Because there wasn't expected to be a 'get better', if that makes sense. So I was having periods of feeling okay-ish, and other periods where I couldn't move for days on end. But this particular day I just decided that this was it. I looked at my husband; he looked so scared, my kids looked so scared. And I just thought, 'I don't want them to experience that.' So it was never about myself. They didn't make me feel like a burden, but I didn't want to be a burden. And I also had this thing about I didn't want my kids to watch me like that. So, yeah, I had a big pile of pills and I decided to take them. And I didn't, obviously, take them because if I did, I'd be dead. And it made me think, when I woke up the next day... Because after that I went off to bed, and woke up the next day and I thought, 'What if I'd gone through with that?' But if you'd had the legal choice on that day, would things have been different? Well, I think they would have been. I think my family probably would have been present. Or maybe I wouldn't have had them here; maybe I just would have done it by myself with the doctor, or maybe I would have had my family all around me, and I would have ended my life. And I just know that that would have been the absolute wrong thing to do, because I was actually suffering, I believe, from depression and exhaustion and the shock of finding out you're dying. All those things were combined. Any one of those things would be quite difficult to deal with, let alone having them all at once. So you've been to those places and you've come out the other end. So why do you think end-of-life choice should not be legal? Before I was sick, before I was diagnosed with being terminally ill, I honestly believed euthanasia was, like, 'Why didn't people have that?' I'd see people or I'd hear stories about people and I'd think, 'Ohhh.' I'd judge my evaluation of their life based on my own great life that I had at the time. So when I ended up being in that position, it made me realise how tough life is for some of those people ` a lot of those people. And I started talking with more and more people. I talk every week with people that are terminally ill. Not all of them are; I talk with some of their family members. And the things that they say to me are, 'I am lonely. I am scared. I don't want to be a burden.' Those are the three things people say to me more often than not. In fact, 99.9% of the time, that's what they'll say. They don't say, 'I'm suffering, I'm in pain,' even though they are. Those aren't the things that primarily concern them. The biggest concerns are those. So are you saying that people who are in a vulnerable state could be tempted to use this if it became law? I think they could be coerced into using it, yes. By who? By family pressure. We see that with the elderly now. I think they're a really good example, with it being Elder Awareness Week this week. We already know that there are people that are being abused for their benefits, or their kids have got them living in their homes and claiming things back for their parents when they're not looking after them. This legislation suggests that, to qualify, you have to have a timeline of six months left to live. What do you think of that? I think a lot can change. I also understand that a lot of people won't be well. But what about Maggie Barry's bill about palliative care and increasing palliative care and doing more research into palliative care? Why can't that be addressed as well? So finally, if you had a chance to say something to the politicians, what would you say? I'd say we trust our politicians to make decisions for us. That's why we don't get to drive around at 150km or not wear our seat belt, or we have to wear a helmet when we're riding our pushbike, and I think we trust them to protect us. We need them to protect us from this bill because idealistically, it could look very appealing to some people. It's what it opens up. Vicki Walsh there. On the other side of the debate is Dave Mullan, a former Methodist preacher who's been living with prostate cancer for 18 years. Medication to stop the spread is no longer working, so he wants the right to choose when life ends. It is advanced, spinal-compressive, something-or-other-resistant prostate cancer. It's resistant to most of the things that they can get to stop it. So it's got to a sort of end stage now. I have been on the gold standard of Pharmac, abiraterone, at $50,000 a year, and grateful for that. But it didn't reduce the cancer at all, or my PSA, which is a rough-and-ready measure of the cancer. And after 18 months on that stuff, when my PSA started doubling every month and got from 50 to 270 in two months, we all had to agree there's no point in any more of that. So I'm now off the medication. When you came off the medication, did your doctors say to you, 'You have this much time to live'? No, they didn't. We had a long talk, and we all agreed that that medication was not going to do any more for me, and it was the top-of-the-line, so we agreed this was the end and that I would be referred back to my GP to make me comfortable. Well, I've had that said to me before, actually, five years ago when we lived up north. But that was not an opportunity for me to say, 'How long do you think I've got?' Because you cannot tell with prostate cancer. You just can't tell. It can move very quickly in some people and very slowly in others. And as you may know, lots of men die with it without even knowing they had it. So it's a strange and sneaky disease. But of late ` the last three months, since we went off abiraterone ` I've been feeling pretty ropey. And at present, not eating properly, I can see myself entering a critical stage pretty quickly. In terms of making you comfortable, what does that look like right now? 'Have some pills for this, have some pills for that. You may be a bit constipated.' Constipated? I'm totally blocked up. And dealing with all of that simple stuff has really been much more trying than I expected. Is it those things which influence your views about euthanasia? No, not really. No, I'm just going through ordinary pain and dealing with it in an ordinary manner. It's just really unpleasant. My concern about end-of-life choice is that I might get to a point where I have got a significant pain from the cancer and it is untreatable. Now, to offset palliative care against choice is not realistic, because palliative care is not able to deal with all pain. How will you know when you're ready to make that choice? I suppose when I am screaming with pain and it is not being dealt with. All the palliative care in the world, even by the specialists, bless their hearts, of hospice, if I'm one of those people who has a pain that cannot be treated, I want to hold up my hand and say, 'This is it. I'm out of here.' If you get to the stage where the pain is unbearable and you want to make that choice, what does that look like? First we're going to have a big family hooley. We're going to get everybody together and tell the family stories and the family jokes. Our family used to sing quite a lot; we might even sing some of the family songs. And do all of that sort of stuff and say our goodbyes. I think that is a very important part of leaving this life ` disengaging with the people that have been close to you. And if you're in a coma in a hospital bed somewhere, that's not possible. So I'd want that first. And then I would like to have the medication available for me to take when I'm ready to take it. And the bill says it's got to be taken in 14 days or it goes back to the pharmacy. Oh no, please, no, I want it to be available for me to take when I want it. Currently, the bill says that you have to have a diagnosis of about six month to live. What do you think of that? I think that's much better than two weeks, which was proposed at some time. That seems reasonable. But I don't think I'd be able to find an expert who would be able to say confidently of me I'll be dead in six months from now or from this time next year. So it may be very hard for me to make a case when the time comes. But I want the opportunity to at least try and make my case. You've been living with cancer for 18 years, and the prognosis has changed over that time. Is there a chance you could make a choice too early? I think with advanced spinal-compressive, something-or-other-resistant prostate cancer, the answer would be no. It will progress. So what would you like to say to the politicians who are currently debating this law? I think what I'd like to say to them is, 'Look, we know all the facts. 'We know what it's all about. Just make a decision. 'And if you've got some doubts about it, 'try and focus on just the small number of people who are going to be affected by the bill.' The bulk of the population are not going to be touched by this bill. People who are against it can still not do it. Nobody's going to be required to do it. They should concentrate just on the people who are going to be affected by it. It might be only 10 people in the first month or the first year. It's not a whole crowd of people, and nobody else's rights are interfered with. Just do it. And we would like to thank both Dave Mullan and Vicki Walsh for not only giving us their time but for being so frank and honest in those interviews. Up next ` who will take on Trump? Washington Post political correspondent Jenna Johnson with her analysis. Welcome back. Campaigning in the US presidential election is now officially on. Donald Trump went to the key swing state, Florida, to launch his bid for re-election in 2020. But who among the Democrats will take him on? It's a crowded field of 23 hopefuls, and the party is about to start candidate debates to weed out the weak contenders. Well, one question the Democrats are wrestling with ` should they launch impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump? The Washington Post's senior political correspondent Jenna Johnson is covering the campaign, so I asked her why the Democrats don't just get on with impeachment? Well, it's` You know, there's a feeling... I mean, in Washington, impeachment is something that politicians talk a lot about. When you get outside of Washington, it's something that most voters are just not... It's not their focus right now. Right. They'd rather see politicians focused on health care and, you know, issues that actually impact their lives. These kinds of comments that the President makes, do they make any dent in his voter base whatsoever? Well, that's the other thing. There's many shades of support for Donald Trump in the United States. There's the diehard supporters ` the people who show up to his rallies ` and they're not movable. There's, like, nothing that he could do to shake that support. It's very, very firm. But then there's a lot of Republicans who kind of held their nose and voted for him in 2016 and really aren't crazy about some of the things he's doing. There are former Democrats ` people who voted for Obama twice, and then switched over and voted for Trump because they thought he was 'the lesser of two evils', is what they often say. You know, but they're kind of like, 'Well, if I have another choice, 'maybe I'll go to someone else.' You were out there talking to people in those voting districts. Are they thinking of swinging their votes? Yeah, yeah. I mean, people, they're open to that. But it depends on who the other person is. It can't just be someone who's not Trump. Well, that's right. Let's talk about the Democratic line-up. There's 23 candidates. Does that play into Trump's hands, actually? Totally. I was just in Iowa, and I sat down with this guy who's 40, who voted twice for Obama, once for Trump and would vote for a Democrat in 2020 but couldn't name any of them. So we tried. He got two. I got up to 18, and I cover this full-time. I mean, there's so many of them. Oh, so you couldn't name all 23? I know. I know. I had to google the last few. It's a big, big field. And I think there's a lot of voters out there, they can name, kind of, some of the people who are high in the polls, but they just don't have the time or the energy to get to know everyone. And there's a worry that if Democrats spend the whole next year fighting with each other and trying to figure out who their nominee is, at the same time, Trump and the Republicans are targeting voters, getting them excited about the election, organising. And there's a worry that they could be outmuscled in 2020. You mentioned high-profile candidates. Joe Biden was out in Iowa. Those two have a long-running spat, don't they? They do. They do. Joe Biden has really set up his candidacy as being` He presents himself as the anti-Trump. Yeah. He was the Vice President to Barack Obama and has watched Trump come in and really undo a lot of the things that he and Obama did. He launched his campaign with a video that focused on the event that happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, where we had white supremacists in the streets, you know, shouting these terrible, racist, ugly things. And he points to that moment as the moment that he decided he should run for president. So it's no wonder that Trump's so anti Biden. I mean, he calls him 1% Joe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he has just zeroed in on Biden. It's as if there is no Democratic primary going on; it's just the two of them duking it out. Do you think it's actually time for people like Biden and Sanders ` the older white-male candidate? Or is it time for a more diverse range of Democratic candidate? Yeah, this is the big discussion in the Democratic Party right now, and when I'm talking with voters, this is the thing that they talk a lot about. There's just a general feeling out there that, you know, maybe Sanders and Biden are just too old. You know, they're of a different generation, and a lot of the movement and excitement that's in the Democratic Party right now is centred around younger people. That's right. You can't name all 23, as you said` Right, right. But who are the up-and-comers? You know, I mean, there's also Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is also on the older end of the pool but is someone who has really kind of caught fire over the last few weeks. There's Senator Kamala Harris of California, who was the Attorney General there and has been kind of pitching herself as someone who could kind of be America's prosecutor ` has suggested that she would be willing to, you know, investigate Donald Trump. You also have former Texas Representative Beto O'Rourke. You also have Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. And there's also Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Exactly. So 'Mayor Pete', as a lot of voters like to call him, is the mayor of this small city in Indiana, the state that our current vice president used to be the governor of. He's young; he's a millennial. He served in the military. And voters love him. When I was in Iowa, so often his name was the first that they were throwing out when they talked about people that they loved. He's also openly gay, so a very historic candidacy. Is there anybody on the Republican side who's going to put their hand up to stand against Trump? You know, there were some attempts. There are a couple people who are going to do it who don't really have much of a name and aren't going to be much of contenders. The Governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, had thought very seriously about challenging the president, especially if the Mueller Report had been more of a bombshell than it ended up being. But right now? But he's decided that there's just not a path forward. So right now, there's not an alternative? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And again, we have months and months to go, and I think a lot of these people have said, you know, if the situation changes and they feel like there's a pathway forward, they will try to challenge him. But they just feel like at this point, given how much money his campaign has and how popular the president is ` among Republicans; not among the whole country but among his party ` it would be difficult for someone to challenge him. So can you predict it now that Trump will be running and he'll get a second term? (LAUGHS) So if there's anything I've learnt from 2016, it's that I don't try to predict anything at all. You know, I mean, the president launched his re-election campaign very early after he was inaugurated president. He's never stopped campaigning. Coming up, our panel dissects the news of the week. Plus, are we going to miss our emissions targets? Why was there nothing in the budget for electric vehicles? Welcome back. I'm joined now by our panel ` Alex Penk of the Maxim Institute, Laura Walters, senior political reporter at Newsroom, and Emma Espiner, who is the national communications lead for Maori health organisation Hapai te Hauora. Welcome to you all this morning. Alex, you've written about your opposition to euthanasia. We had Stefanie Green from Canada on this morning, and she's very supportive of it; she says it's a privilege to be doing it. Does that sway you at all? Yeah, I think listening to Dr Green I was really struck by her good intention to relieve people's suffering. I really respect that, but I think when we come to a complex issue like this it's not enough just to have good intentions. And I think to do justice to the issue we have to draw out a bit wider and look at the bigger picture, not just listen to the experience of one doctor or a handful of patients, or even one jurisdiction, but look at the way this practice has worked out across a range of jurisdictions where they've had it for a number of years. But she represents doctors and nurses, so she represents quite a broad, would you say, Emma, quite a broad section of the medical community in Canada. Does that add to her credibility over this? Yeah, it's interesting. You can't really talk about Canada's situation here, I think. And my primary concern is around health equity, so legislation isn't enacted in a vacuum. And so we have a system that delivers inequitable outcomes for Maori. And I think before we approach any of these sorts of issues, we need to address that. Because there is a risk of doing further harm. So, sorry, are you saying that`? From tikanga Maori perspective, where does that sit in terms of euthanasia? That's an entirely different conversation, and there is no one perspective. But my concern really is that we know that there are issues in the current health system. And when you deal with something like euthanasia and you're going to plug that into the system as it exists, I would rather deal with the problems we have in the health system now, and then bring something like... So you're saying taihoa, you're saying, 'Let's not do this'? Personally, that's my concern. Because I grew up... I knew Helen Kelly growing up, and so... And have a personal` I don't have a moral issue with euthanasia, and I think for someone like Helen, who sought it, I think possibly that should have been granted to her. But that's a small set of people, and we're looking at legislation that will affect a lot of people. And so you have to look at the greater good. I'll come back to that in a moment, but we've been through this process before, Laura, and we're watching this bill move through Parliament and we've got a second reading. It's a member's bill; it only gets a couple of hours of discussion. Is that going to be enough? How do you see it playing out? Yeah, and I think you've really hit on it there. I was just saying earlier, in the green room, I think that this bill has been let down by the process the whole way through. We had a massively long select committee process, where the select committee travelled all over the country for months and months and months, and generally the discussion went in circles. And so you can almost potentially, in that case, have too much democracy. But then at the end of that process, we didn't have a bill that was fit to pass. We've now got all of these supplementary order papers that are going to potentially be put in at the very end of the process, and the MPs that we're asking to vote on it won't have access to extra advice on these quite significant changes, and so I think that in terms of this bill, the process has kind of just let it down. Alex, do you agree with that? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of confusion about what the bill actually says, even at the moment. In the interviews that you did, you spoke about the bill being limited to terminal illness six-month prognosis. The bill in its current state hasn't been changed at all. True. David Seymour's announced an intention, but we haven't seen any amendments from him. And when he has spoken about those amendments in the past, he's actually talked about an amendment that would extend coverage to neuro-degenerative conditions with a 12-month prognosis. So I think it's about time for him to put up or shut up in terms of his amendments. That would be really helpful for the current state of the debate. But he has indicated that he wants a six-month timeframe, hasn't he, Emma. So that's on the cards. Sure, it's on the cards; that's his idea, but at the moment we are missing a credible and informed public debate on what his proposals actually are. And I think it'd be really helpful to address as well some of the concerns that Emma's raised about health inequities. If we could look again at the broader picture, and if you look at jurisdictions like Oregon, where you see, for example, that over time you've got a rising number of people who have said, 'Hey, I fear being a burden, and that's one of the reasons I'm choosing assisted suicide.' But is that true? The numbers in Oregon have stayed fairly steady. No, they've trended upwards over time. It's still low, though. It's only half a percent, compared with jurisdictions like Canada and Belgium. Yeah, I think it's the trend that's interesting, and the trend indicates that there's expansion in practice over time. You see the same thing in Canada. So in the first six months that they did their reporting regime, they're averaging about 85 euthanasia deaths per month. In the last report that they put out, that's gone up to 260 a month. And the doctor there said it was a new product on the block, to put it like that. Laura` Sorry. The health economics of it are really interesting, because health is one of those areas that will always suck up more money. It will always be subject to the vagaries of the economy and so issues like this, which deeply affect your spiritual, emotional, family, well being, all of this sort of stuff, you don't want those pressures, really, to act on it. And Pharmac got a negligible increase in funding in the so-called Well-being Budget. Now, if we're serious about making end-of-life care better and including euthanasia, then you need to improve access to cancer medications, you need to do the whole lot. Right. So fix the equity first. OK. Can this be an 'as well as', though? There's been a lot of debate during this time on do we need better palliative care or do we need euthanasia ` can't we have both? The whole suite, yeah. It can be both. And people who are in this debate do specify that it should be not an either/or. Can I just move on to something totally different, and that's Donald Trump. He launched his re-election campaign this week. Doesn't seem like anybody will be standing up against him, Laura, in the Republicans. It's a fait accompli. Yeah, well, time and time again we've thought that he's going to stumble or, we think, creates his own noose, and then he keeps going. Yeah. And nothing seems to touch him. Yeah, the rules just keep shifting. That's right. And 23, probably down to 20 Democratic hopefuls, Alex, that's really confusing for the electorate. Yeah, it is. It's hard keeping the names and the faces straight, there are so many of them. And to be honest, I look at US politics sometimes ` and UK politics ` and just think we've got a lot to be thankful for in New Zealand. (LAUGHTER) Certainly from all this way down here, do you...? Is it relevant? Yeah, is it relevant, but is it a sideshow that we're just interested in, or should we actually be taking a real interest in this, Emma? I think one of the commentators on Politico said that for those of us that are looking for something to watch now that Game of Thrones is finished` (SIMON LAUGHS) ...this is a great option. But what gets lost there is that they're not talking about policy, they're talking about all these different people. And so, like anything, when it becomes about personality, you lose the thread. And there are some real issues in the States that need addressing. Laura, who do you think Jacinda Ardern wants to phone to say congratulations? Oh, that's a good question. Anyone else. (LAUGHTER) Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we were hearing earlier about Joe Biden potentially being the anti-Trump. I don't know if I would categorise him that way. I think Kamala Harris or someone like that, potentially, more, or even Bernie Sanders. He seems so radical in the United States, a Social Democrat ` it's basically Labour here. It's not crazy for us. But I think you need to be careful about picking a winner too soon. There's this great Washington Post Twitter account that one of my colleagues introduced me yesterday, called Who Led, and it looks back on past elections and at this point in the campaign, who was leading. And in 2008 it was Hillary Clinton, and we know what happened there. So anything could happen at this stage. It could be anyone's game. All right, we'll all sit on the sidelines and... ...enjoy the political theatre. Enjoy the political theatre. OK. Panel, thank you very much for your time. Thanks. Kia ora. All right, so, to meet climate targets 80% of our car imports will need to be electric in 10 years' time. At the moment the figure is 2%. So why did the government commit nothing to it in the budget? Here's John-Michael Swannix. Out here we've got the best car I've ever owned. I've had some pretty big-engined cars in the past, particularly when I was young. It's a Nissan Leaf. Like most, it's a second-hand Japanese import. So how much does it cost to charge? Depending on what tariff you're on, for a lot of people, the equivalent of a full tank, um, could be $6 or $7. Auckland resident Russell Baillie is living the change we will all need to make. I just saw it as the way of the future. Obviously, they do cost more. So we could get a three-year-old petrol car for a lot cheaper than a three-year-old electric car. And that's perhaps somewhere where the government does need to have a look at it. Adapting to climate change is one of this government's priorities. This is my generation's nuclear-free moment. But are the ministers responsible asleep at the wheel? I can't give the details of the policy, but I definitely think that we'll be announcing some policies within this year. We're hoping to make some decisions in the second half of this year. I've promised dates before and I've overshot them, so I won't say that. Before we announce new targets, we need to be sure that we have the ambitious policies, which I am very supportive of. There are things that we could do fairly quickly, but they could have a pretty negative effect on low-income households. And I have to say this has been disappointing for me. I was hoping that we'd be able to move sooner on that. When are we going to see some incentives for EVs? When are we going to see some announcement about what's going to happen in that space? Soon. Well, not that soon, it turns out. Last month's Well-being Budget had nothing for electric cars, and to meet our climate targets, 80% of car imports will need to be electric within a decade. And nearly every car on the road will need to be an EV by 2050. At the moment, they make up less than 2% of imports and 0.3% of our fleet. There's been promises made, dates quoted, not met, and still nothing. But how do we change this? Drive Electric believes the fastest way would be through incentives for businesses to transition their fleet. One company already on that path is Meridian. Why was it important for you to switch the fleet over to electric? 20% of New Zealand's emissions are from transport. And so we know that's a significant chunk that we can make an influence. It's really cool when you produce energy from wind and water and sun and then you can take one of the biggest emissions pieces out of the back yard. I understand about half your fleet is currently electric. What's the goal from here? We want to get to 75%. That was our goal to get by around July. We want to have a fully electrified fleet across all of our sites and assets at the very latest by, I think we said 2030. I think we'll easily get there by 2025. Nick travelled to the Nordic EV convention earlier this year and saw first-hand the success some countries are having transitioning their fleets. In Sweden, one in five car imports are electric, and in Norway it's more than half. These countries give tax exemptions and other incentives to encourage EV uptake. But Nick says it's not as simple as copying their approach. We don't have abundant oil reserves that can fund things like this. We don't tend to tax any type of vehicles to a great extent other than GST. So what would you say that our government could do to boost the number of EVs coming into the country? The best thing that the government could do is continue working on different ranges of incentives. Certainly a feebate system and scheme, introduced in a modest way, and progressively managed over time I think is a really sensible, fiscally responsible way that they could do it. A feebate scheme would see the owners of higher-emission vehicles paying more, while electric vehicles pay less. This could happen when buying the car or through the annual registration. However, there are complications. Putting up the cost of vehicles will hurt poorer families the most. That is why we are taking our time to work through this. The small size of New Zealand's vehicle market is another complicating factor. China is mass-producing electric vehicles, but most are left-hand drive for the European market. And back home, some EV owners are expressing frustration at their fellow drivers. Facebook groups have been set up by owners annoyed at petrol vehicles parking in EV charging spaces. There's always gonna be dickheads about the place. And once again, some of them are deliberate rednecks doing it out of spite, saying, 'I don't believe in this. I don't believe in climate change. I'm gonna get in your way, 'and I'm gonna obstruct you.' Others are just, 'I don't give a damn about anybody else. 'This is a close car park; I'm gonna take it.' But Russell says charging station disputes shouldn't hold people back. Like most EV owners, we never actually use any of those charge stations. So with the charging during the day with the sun when we're at work or charging in the evenings or weekend, we just don't need to use any of those stations. Russell and his family have gone all out to improve their environmental footprint. Their house is incredibly energy-efficient, designed to capture heat during the day and retain it at night. It's also powered by solar panels and has its own battery storage and even a green roof. But it's the electric car making the biggest difference to the Baillies' emissions profile. So you'd never go back? No. (LAUGHS) And with the government dragging its wheels, more people like Russell are going to have to lead the way. There you go. Stay with us. We're back after the break. Welcome back, and we're back with our panel ` Alex Penk, Laura Walkers and Emma Espiner. Thanks for your time, guys. Christopher Luxon. Laura, did he resign at the right time? Is he going straight for the top job? Um, it appears that way. Everyone's talking about him being the next John Key. Um, but I don't know. If we look back at John Key and what he did, he slipped in the backbench. No one kind of knew him, they got him ready, they groomed him for leadership and then he went. Whereas everyone's gonna be watching Chris the whole way through, every step. You know, he has this massive public profile. That's good. That gives him a step up. But it could also, you know, be` Alex, has John Key sort of spoiled the path for Christopher Luxon? I mean, you can't emulate him. No. I mean, look, I don't know anything about the particular situation, but it just seems to me a little bit as though the media has had a go at getting Judith Collins to challenge Simon Bridges. That hasn't paid off. Now they're ready to anoint the successor. More seriously, to me it poses an interesting, kind of, question around who New Zealanders regard as public leaders. And so we seem to look to people in business, people who have achieved some kind of celebrity, sportspeople and politicians. There seems to be a bit of a nexus there, and it might be a good idea if we broadened our concept of culture of leaders. What do you think about that, Emma? Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point, and something that I remember about an interview with the other Espiner that Chris Luxon did back in 2016, and he talked about being a devout Christian. Um, and that's an interesting dynamic in terms of political leadership in New Zealand, because we're very... We like our secular and our church to remain separate. U, the Christian parties, they've never breached the 5% threshold. And so that's something that's personal to him, and I'm not casting aspersions on that, but how you manage that dynamic. And I think Bill English did it really well. I mean, he's a staunch Catholic, but it was quite separate. But John Key managed` because he was quite secular` He just, you know... (LAUGHS) Laura, can you see how this might play out for Christopher Luxon? If he says, 'Yes, I want to be part of National', what would the timeframe be? Yeah, that's a good question. I guess they can move stuff as quickly as they like. My guess would be that he has been having conversations with the party before this and they have a plan for him and they'll out him through the candidates' training. He could easily stand in 2020. And he said no to the Botany seat, um, but, you know, they will have plans for him. And our Newsroom colleague Bernard Hickey wrote a great piece about he could be the John Key; he could be the Don Brash. And not as in the Don Brash Don Brash but in terms of the timing of the political cycle and potentially coming in at the wrong time. Everybody realises he's not going to offer you a lolly at the end of every conversation. (ALL LAUGH) Or a drink. There might be some cash in the election, anyway. All right. Let's move on to Oranga Tamariki ` again in the headlines this week. So, the Ombudsman has announced a third investigation into the organisation after the attempted uplift of a baby in Hawke's Bay. Um, do you think this is necessary, Emma? This level? Three investigations at Oranga Tamariki. Something is necessary. I mean, there is some nuance in this debate, and I think some of it has been missing in the commentary we have seen. So, I think it's important for people to realise that it's possible to hold two views at the same time. One is that there are some children who are not safe in their families, but also that the Ministry For Children doesn't have the process right. And so it's not an either/or thing. I'm actually going to attend the protest rally in Wellington, the Hands Off Our Tamariki rally on the 30th of July, um, because I feel very strongly about it that something has to change. A bunch of reviews? I mean, it's better than nothing. But Aaron Smale wrote for Newsroom that what reviews do is they allow politicians to say 'the review's been undertaken, so we can't really comment at this point.' OK. Is that how it's playing out, Laura? I mean, the politicians have said because it's too hard, it's too hot a topic to handle, let's just review it? Mm. It's been really interesting to watch the change in communication strategy through this. To start with, it was defensive. It was, 'These stories are misleading.' Then it was an acceptance. 'OK, maybe our process isn't perfect and we never said it was going to be straight away.' And now it's, 'Oh, we're having these reviews and we'll just have to wait and see, 'and we can't talk about the specific Hawke's Bay case because that's being independently reviewed. 'And we'll just wait and see what comes out of the others, 'but of course we weren't going to be perfect.' And there seems to be a lack of accountability the whole way through. And, at the end of the day, someone has to stand up and be accountable for what's going on. OK. One more issue of the week was the government finally announced details of the gun buy-back scheme post-Christchurch. 95% of the value of new firearms. All those kinds of things. Alex, do you think they're being, sort of, fair with the numbers that are coming up? Yeah, I noticed that the Minister of Finance said there's significant uncertainty about the amount of money they should be allocating for this. They've got to work really hard to getting to a fair position, I think, because the whole point here is this has to be effective. If people aren't going to hand in their guns because they think they're not going to get a fair price, that actually undermines everything else that this whole reform is about. Is there going to be a lot of political backlash over this, do you think, Emma? And that's a really interesting point because I think this is an opportunity for people to buy into change in the country, and if you come out and say, 'All gun owners are murderers and terrible people,' that's not about bringing people on board. And so I think the fairness of the process is really important so that you can have people say, 'Look, I'm doing this because it's a good thing. Um, I am forced to,' but just to have the ability to bring people with you rather than sort of slamming it down their throats. Laura, it's a bit of a tightrope to walk, isn't it, for the government on this one. Depending if they just have their moral mandate. I think that's changing, actually. I think it has been in the past, because that gun lobby has been so vocal. But what we've actually seen through this process after March 15th and what happened in Christchurch is that while they've been vocal, it's a very small minority. Those people that are saying hands off our guns, that's a tiny portion of the voters. And at the moment, since ACT said, 'Hey, we don't think what the Government's announced is fair,' they've said, 'We're voting for ACT.' But, you know` So they might get a few more votes, but not a heap. All right. I'm going to have to leave it there. Thank you very much for our panel this week. OK. So, there was plenty of fire in the debating chamber this week but also some cross-party celebration for a distinguished MP's birthday. Here's Finn Hogan with the week that was in Parliament. Well, after being booted out by the Speaker last week, it was an unusually contentious Winston Peters in the house this time around. Could I ask the minister another question? SPEAKER: The member can have a crack, yeah. I'm asking for your permission. (CHUCKLING) The Deputy Prime Minister still had plenty of fire for Paula Bennett, however, hitting back hard over her claim that National halved meth use while in power. On behalf of the Prime Minister, that claim is the world's best-kept secret. And things also got a little bit rowdy once Eugenie Sage brought the subject of dolphins into the mix. I want to interrupt the member and say that there might be some debate around the science of the effect of loud noises on dolphins. There's not much on me at the moment. It's getting too loud. But if there's one thing that can unite the house, it's wishing the Speaker a happy birthday ` if only with tongues in cheek. That I would certainly not want to see a man of your recently acquired age being subjected to the same, would you say, rigours, and responsibilities that the dolphin population` Well, I will, before calling the Member, thank him for the card which I received in the mail. WINSTON PETERS: Oh, you're welcome. (CHUCKLES) (LAUGHTER) Could I just say as a precaution, sir, we in this house might cross the divide politically and always be concerned with noises made by endangered species, and I think you're being rather hard on her. (LAUGHTER, SCATTERED APPLAUSE) There are times when I regret thanking the Member. All right. And that's all from us for now. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you again next weekend. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2019 This programme was made with the assistance of the NZ On Air Platinum Fund.