Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating has reacted angrily to the passage of Victoria's Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill through the state's lower house, branding it "deeply regressive" and an abrogation of "the core instinct to survive".
Mr Keating, who weighed in to the contentious debate at the last minute on Thursday to warn MPs against the change, has issued a terse statement on the legislation.
"The passage of the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill through the Victorian lower house is truly a sad moment for the whole country," Mr Keating said.
"What is means is that the civic guidance provided by the state, in our second largest state, is voided when it comes to the protection of our most valuable asset; the essential human rights of the citizenry, especially and particularly those in either a fragile state or state of mind or fragile period.
"I am sure it is true that those who voted for the legislation did so with the best of intentions.
"But again, this vote underlines the compelling truth that, as often as not, good intentions are not enough.
"To do or to cause to abrogate the core human instinct to survive and live, for the spirit to hang on against physical deprivations, is to turn one's back on the compulsion built into the hundreds of thousands of years of our evolution.
"One can only hope that the members of the Victorian upper house have the understanding and the confidence to beat this deeply regressive legislation."
Mr Keating remains hopeful that the Legislative Assembly's 47-37 approval of the controversial laws will be reversed when the historic bill reaches the Legislative Council next month.
But describing the bill as "safe, balanced and conservative," Victoria's Labor Premier Daniel Andrews warmly welcomed the successful navigation of its first parliamentary test.
"This is extraordinary. Public life is about getting the big and important things done," he said, while praising his Health Minister, Jill Hennessy, for driving the process.
That endorsement came despite the ill-feeling caused when Ms Hennessy inadvertently sent a text message intended for someone else to her colleague and Deputy Premier James Merlino, in which she reportedly described him as a "c---".
Mr Merlino campaigned strongly to defeat the bill, moving an amendment with that intended effect during the protracted parliamentary debate.
Retired Liberal senator Bill Heffernan praised Mr Keating for speaking out.
He said during the parliamentary inquiry into the Northern Territory's Rights of the Terminally Ill law in the mid-1990s - which saw the Howard government intervene to override the Territory statute in 1997 - the committee took evidence in the Netherlands from a health professional who claimed that as many as 50 per cent of the people who'd been legally "euthanased" in the previous year had not given their consent.
"It was becoming, as our informant described it, a management tool for institutions," the 74-year old said.
"There are unintended consequences which we'll all regret, so I congratulate Paul Keating for taking a stand."
As the vote approached, Mr Keating had criticised what he called the "bald utopianism" underpinning the idea that the state could codify protections for its most vulnerable people, while also making it legal to participate in a person's death.
"The advocates support a bill to authorise termination of life in the name of compassion, while at the same time claiming they can guarantee protection of the vulnerable, the depressed and the poor," he wrote.
"No law and no process can achieve that objective. This is the point. If there are doctors prepared to bend the rules now, there will be doctors prepared to bend the rules under the new system. Beyond that, once termination of life is authorised, the threshold is crossed."
