SAVES is not affiliated with Exit International / Dr Philip Nitschke and opposes the public availability of a 'peaceful pill'.

We last updated our Living Will Kit, which provides plain language information on the provisions of the Consent to Medical Treatment and Palliative Care Act, 1995 and how to use them, in April 1997. While there have been no changes to the Act since then, oversight of the Act has been strengthened. We welcome this development and have updated our kit to reflect current policy directions.

The Act is now administered by the Department of Human Services, Strategic Planning and Policy Division. Valuable suggestions from the Department for updating our kit are gratefully acknowledged. The Department is strongly opposed to the term 'Living Will', which is regarded as colloquial and possibly misleading. To avoid confusion over terminology, our kit is now headed 'Making an Advance Directive for Health Care in South Australia (under the Consent to Medical Treatment and Palliative Care Act 1995)'.

Our recommendations on how to use the Act are essentially unchanged but we have dropped our earlier practice of providing Schedule 1 and 2 forms completed in accordance with our main suggestion. This will avoid the possibility of undue influence being claimed. Our suggestions are now presented as examples on a separate sheet for optional transfer to the forms as decided by the user.

We have also dropped our suggested method of overcoming the difficulty that can arise in getting the signatories to Schedule 1 together at the same place and at the same time as required in the Act. The Department is exploring ways of resolving this problem, and in the meantime queries in this or any other respect should be taken up with the Strategic Planning and Policy Division of the Department. (Ph. 8226 6471 or 8226 6436)

In our view it is very unlikely that the legality of the individual Schedules 1 and/or 2, completed in accordance with the approach taken in our earlier kits, would be challenged. However, those wishing to avoid this possibility should seek legal advice and/or use our revised kit.

The kit is available free of charge to financial members on receipt of a stamped (98c) self-addressed A4 envelope. The cost for non-members and unfinancial members is $5 in addition to the stamped self-addressed envelope.