Advocacy for Inclusion, ACT Down Syndrome and Intellectual Disability ACT and Women with Disabilities ACT – coming together as the ACT Disability Directed Advocacy Caucus have today announced we intend to withdraw from participation in the implementation of the ACT Governments Voluntary Assisted Dying reforms. We’ve taken this decision because the government has not responded to requests for urgent additional support for people with disability to engage on a complex and consequential reform with complex consultation requirements while there are also pressures in other areas. We’ve also noted that the scheme design has not acted on extensive feedback from the disability community over a two years of work and engagement including funding to address unintended consequences in the VAD debate such as hate speech, investments in social model training for practitioners, an emergency support pool for people with disabilities and dedicated suicide prevention work. In these circumstances we cannot be confident that further investment in work on VAD is a good use of our resources. As we withdraw we have asked government to be mindful and attend to issues raised repeatedly across the consultation period by disability groups.