Brown hopes to resubmit euthanasia bill

1.00pm

The architect of legislation that would allow mercy killings said today he believed Lesley Martin should be discharged without conviction.

Martin, a euthanasia campaigner, was yesterday found guilty of attempting to murder her terminally ill mother.

New Zealand First deputy leader Peter Brown said today he followed the trial as closely as possible through the media, and believed Martin had "suffered enough".

He personally supported the call from Martin's legal counsel that she should be "discharged without conviction".

"She experienced huge stress in her life at the time of her mother's illness and death, and now with the ordeal of going through a court trial," Mr Brown said.

"That is enough. She is not a criminal and we should be using taxpayers money to chase and catch the real evil people.

"I say, let her go free now."

Legislation Mr Brown designed that would have allowed the terminally ill to seek help to end their lives was defeated in Parliament last August.

However, Mr Brown told NZPA today he hoped to resurrect it.

His Death with Dignity Bill was voted down by 60 to 57 votes.

MPs, who voted on their conscience and not party lines, did not even allow it to go to a select committee for consideration and public submissions.

Mr Brown understood when the bill was defeated that he could not reintroduce it this parliamentary term.

However, he now understood that after a certain time it was possible to re-submit the bill into the ballot for members' bills.

He expected to do that soon, after a bit of "fine-tuning" of the legislation to make its intentions clearer.

He had been offered some help by lawyers.

"I don't think it's major surgery.

"I've always felt that it needed a bit of tidying up in certain areas."

During the debate last year, one MP had claimed the legislation would affect children.

"It doesn't and it says that in the bill. That will be made a lot clearer.

"The thrust of the bill, it will be exactly the same."

He said MPs would not have the final say on euthanasia but under his legislation, the issue would go to public referendum.

Mr Brown said he had had "favourable" comments from Prime Minister Helen Clark about the bill, and said he might ask the Government to consider adopting it as a government bill.

- NZPA