2026 Annual Lecture

To be delivered by Distinguished Professor Ben White

4th September 2026 @ Royal Pines Resort, Gold Coast

This year’s annual lecture will once again be co-hosted with the Australasian Cemeteries and Crematoria Association, as part of their annual conference.

Death, choice and evolution: the experience of voluntary assisted dying in Australia

This Lecture will chart the course of Australia’s experiencewith voluntary assisted dying and consider what the future might hold for this relatively new end-of-life choice. Following a short-lived law in the Northern Territory, there were sustained efforts over decades to legalise voluntary assisted dying. Reform finally occurred in Victoria and then swept across the country. The passing of these laws was followed by the establishment of systems to enable access to voluntary assisted dying in the healthcare and community settings. Today, approximately 10,000 people have died from choosing to access voluntary assisted dying and there is a distinctive Australian model. Yet voluntary assisted dying remains new and questions remain about how this practice will became part of Australian healthcare and wider death and dying systems. Those questions include the role of institutions, places of death, and who should be eligible to access voluntary assisted dying.

About the Speaker: Distinguished Professor Ben White

Distinguished Professor Ben White is Professor of End-of-Life Law and Regulation in the School of Law, Queensland University of Technology. He was a foundation Director of the Australian Centre for Health Law Research and still co-leads its End-of-Life Research Program. Ben has been researching end-of-life law, policy and practice for 25 years and has produced over 250 publications. He has been part of interdisciplinary teams awarded over $A67 million in the field of end-of-life decision-making, including from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, Commonwealth and State governments and philanthropic organisations. Ben’s research currently focuses on voluntary assisted dying (VAD). Current projects include an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship on ‘Optimal Regulation of Voluntary Assisted Dying’, a national study of VAD in practice, and an exploratory study of dementia and VAD. He (with colleagues) developed the mandatory training in Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland for clinicians providing VAD.