Mobile euthanasia unit 'ready for law change'

Premier Lara Giddings and Tasmanian Greens leader Nick McKim are developing a private members' bill to legalise euthanasia, with a discussion paper expected in the next few weeks.

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition executive director, Canadian Alex Schadenberg, was in Hobart to meet Legislative Councillors and some MHAs to lobby against legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide.

He said studies undertaken in Belgium where euthanasia was legal showed the law, while it was clear, was not being followed.

He said a study published in 2010 of euthanasia deaths in Flanders found that 32 per cent of those deaths were done without request or consent.

"You cannot actually assume that everybody will be protected,'' Mr Schadenberg said.

"What you're actually doing in law . . . you have to create an exception under certain circumstances for murder.''

Mr Schadenberg said a euthanasia bill was defeated in the Canadian Parliament in 2010 but the debate led to a parliamentary committee looking at ways palliative care could be improved.

Meanwhile, Exit International director Dr Nitschke made public plans for a Tasmanian mobile medically assisted suicide clinic, modelled on the Dutch version.

He said the clinic model would be "readied for operation to coincide with the expected law change in Tasmania''.

Dr Nitschke said since announcing the establishment of a Hobart clinic in 2011, it had become clear a mobile service would better serve the needs of seriously ill people who want to die in their own homes rather than an institutional environment.