Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board has released its 2025–26 annual report, revealing a sharp uptick in the number of assisted suicide deaths over the past year and a staggering 400% increase since the practice was legalised. Assisted suicide now accounts for 1.1% of all deaths in Victoria.
The entire report can be accessed below.
by Kathy Clubb
Overview
More people in Victoria are dying from voluntary assisted dying (VAD), and more are choosing to
have practitioners facilitate the procedure, according to the 2025–26 annual report of the state’s
Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board.
The overall number of deaths during this 12-month period was 512, which includes both patient-administrated deaths as well as those facilitated by physicians. This brings the total number of deaths since VAD was legalised in mid-2019 to 2,188. That figure is over 3,000 when one includes the number of patients with permits but who died before accessing VAD.
1,156 patients applied for VAD, representing an increase of almost 40% from the previous year with 908 permits being issued – an increase of over 40%. This is the biggest increase in a single year since assisted suicide was legalised.
401 applications were withdrawn, most commonly because the patient died before they could access VAD. According to the report, 39% of patients passed away within two weeks of making their first VAD request. Proponents of VAD see this as a negative, and have secured amendments (see below) to make it even easier and quicker for patients to take their own lives in the future.
Suicide drugs were dispensed to 702 people; 161 of those were medical practitioners. The number of deaths directly caused by medical professionals increased from just under to just over one quarter of the total.
The most sobering figure is the increase in deaths from the beginning of the VAD regime: there were 129 deaths in the first complete year, 2019–2020, meaning that there has been a 400% increase over the past six years.
Soothing language
Since the report is compiled by avid proponents of assisted suicide, the language is naturally very favourable towards the practice.
For example, increases in the number of patients committing suicide is disconcertingly described as “reassuring”. The report’s authors also believe it is “reassuring” that there is growing community awareness of VAD, although they express regret that more patients from non-English speaking backgrounds are not choosing to kill themselves.
Similarly, is deemed “reassuring” that those living in regional areas have good access to assisted suicide, since 40% of applications are coming from outside the Melbourne metro area, despite the lower relative population.
Expansion of assisted suicide planned from 2027
Amendments to the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act were made last year and will come into effect next year. They are breathtaking in their scope and for the increased access patients will have to legally taking their own lives. From the report:
- removal of the “gag clause”. In the Act, health practitioners were legally prohibited from initiating discussions about VAD with patients. The patient had to raise the topic first. The Amendment Act allows health practitioners, including medical practitioners, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, psychologists, and Aboriginal health practitioners, to begin discussions as part of their end-of-life care.
- extending medical prognosis timeframe. The Act required a prognosis of less than 6 months to live, or 12 months for a neurodegenerative condition. The Amendment Act extends the prognosis timeframe to 12 months for all eligible conditions.
- reduced minimum waiting period. The minimum period of 9 days from an applicant’s first request to final request has been reduced to 5 days.
- providing choice of administration of VAD substance. The Act required applicants to self-administer the VAD substance unless they were unable to do so. The Amendment Act empowers applicants to choose either self-administration or practitioner administration, and to change method of administration more easily.
- removal of the need for a third assessment. There will no longer be a requirement for a third prognosis assessment for applications with a neurodegenerative condition.
- stronger conscientious objection obligations. The Amendment Act clarifies that health practitioners who conscientiously object to providing VAD services must still inform the applicant that another practitioner can assist them and provide referral information.
- changes to practitioner eligibility. At least one of the medical practitioners assessing a person’s eligibility to access VAD must have practised for at least one year following specialist or vocational registration (instead of 5 years post-fellowship as currently required). A new role of administering practitioner will be created, extending the authority to administer VAD substances to registered nurses (with at least 5 years registration) and nurse practitioners.
- more flexible residency eligibility. While the requirement for an applicant to have been resident in Victoria for 12 months remains, the Amendment Act creates an exemption application process to the Secretary of the Department of Health. [page 7]
When things go wrong
While the report focused on the bureaucratic side of VAD – applications, permits and compliance – no mention was made of complications that arose during patient deaths. Nevertheless, some idea of potential complications can be gleaned from studies and reports in other jurisdictions where euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal.
For example, this study of 649 cases from the Netherlands shows that:
- Complications occurred in 7 percent of cases of assisted suicide
- Problems with completion occurred in 16 percent of the cases. These included:
- a longer-than-expected time to death
- failure to induce coma
- induction of coma followed by awakening of the patient
- In cases of euthanasia, complications and problems with completion occurred in 3 percent and 6 percent respectively.
- The physician intervened in 18% of cases to administer a lethal medication, meaning that these became euthanasia cases. Reasons included:
- problems with completion
- inability of the patient to take all the medications.
Another study reveals that “Patients may become unconscious relatively quickly but the dying process can take up to 30 hours or more. There are also reports of people re-emerging from a coma and sitting up during the dying process.” It also mentions that the drugs used for killing patients have been used to kill prisoners saying: ” … use of medicines during executions has been described as ‘inhumane’ with reports of people feeling ‘burning’ sensations throughout their bodies prior to death.“
Other recorded complications include difficulty in ingesting drugs, regurgitation, seizures. There can also be an impact on family members, with reports of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression after loved ones takes their own lives through VAD.
What ‘non-compliance’ really means
One section of the report is dedicated to the topic of “non-compliance”, an innocent-sounding term which in reality can be a matter of life and death. The report summarizes the issue by saying that “the rate of non-compliance remains low – at about 2% of applications – and typically involves administrative errors that do not present material risks to applicants.”
However, buried later in the report is a case which had nothing whatsoever to do with “administrative errors”: someone used their partner’s legally-dispensed suicide drugs to take their own life.
The contact person was the partner of a VAD applicant who had a cancer diagnosis and a prognosis of less than six months. The applicant made their first request for VAD in December 2025, and a self-administration permit was issued in February 2026.
In April 2026, the VAD applicant died in hospital, without having taken the substance. The contact person, the applicant’s partner, is assumed to have consumed the VAD substance at some point over the subsequent two days.
Three days after the applicant’s death the Board and the Department of Health were notified of both the applicant’s death through usual reporting processes, and, at the same time, the death of the contact person. [page 49]
The report ends by saying that “What this experience has brought into focus is the importance of grief and bereavement support for the partners, family members, and support people of those who access VAD, as with any end-of-life care option.”
This conclusion, while giving the appearance of compassion, overlooks the stark reality: assisted suicide and euthanasia teach society that killing oneself is the answer to any of life’s problems, from terminal illness or mental illness to loneliness and grief.
Advocates for assisted suicide including the authors of the new Victorian report should not be surprised if those left behind also see suicide as a way out of their suffering. Sadly, these proponents of radical individualism fail to acknowledge how incoherent – and dangerous – their position really is.
About the author
Kathy Clubb is an Australian mother and grandmother who has home-educated her children for the best part of 30 years. In 2016, Kathy was part of an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Victoria’s abortion exclusion-zones, which led to a constitutional challenge in the High Court of Australia in late 2018. Her articles have appeared at Family Life International, The Remnant Newspaper, LifeSiteNews, the Daily Declaration, Caldron Pool and Fidelity magazine.