My mother, Myrtle Tapscott, was the most generous person I have ever known.

I couldn't hold my mother in my arms as she died.

Fourteen months after he lost the power in his right arm, my husband, John Macdonald, received his diagnosis of motor neurone disease on 23rd of May 2009.

Our mother June was a proud woman who was down-to-earth and genuine yet steeped in tradition as to the “protocols” in life and the personas expected of discreetness and personal privacy to those outside the walls of our home.

Thirteen years ago Bill Spanbroek made an impassioned plea to West Australian and federal politicians to let his terminally ill stepson Michael die with dignity, but the plea fell on deaf ears. Now he says we have the chance to do better.

As a Catholic, I’ve always been taught that suicide and the ending of life “unnaturally” is a sin, or wrong. But that’s never really stuck with a lot of people in the Church. It’s a very outdated view. For me, being Catholic has always meant caring about others. It’s about going out and doing things for other people and fighting for justice.

In 2006, my mother was diagnosed with acute leukemia. She had been suffering from myeloma (a type of bone marrow cancer) for seven years and knew it could turn malignant, which it did in September of that year. She was given about another five months to live.

There have been several times over the years where I have watched dear friends of mine die of cancer.

My parents Lindsay and Janet Henderson were GPs in the Scottish Highlands. In those early days doctors were able to assist dying without  question. If you were a GP in a village where you knew all the families, when death was near you assisted them to go peacefully, if requested.

John Hammond may be one of Western Australia’s most high profile lawyers but he rates a university summer job working at a Home of Peace for the incurable and dying as the emotionally toughest he has faced.