Thank you, James Valentine, for being upfront about this great taboo

Thank you, James Valentine.

Not just for your stellar career and gifts as a broadcaster. And not simply for your company and instinct for mischief, excellent though they were.

Thank you for doing the hard thing: being upfront about death and dying. And now, we learn, about voluntary assisted dying (VAD), still treated by many as the great taboo.

In 2024, James had already gifted his audience with his courage, not only by announcing that he had oesophageal cancer, but by bringing his doctors into the studio with him to discuss his cancer and how it might be treated.

Perhaps just as importantly, James did not shy away from expressing the many emotions coursing through him, not least fear.

For thousands of people facing the same fear, or worse, James modelled how to be alive while facing death.

Our discomfort with discussing death can stop what used to be normal conversations in their tracks. As if illness doesn’t take away enough – our health, our energy, our future – sometimes it can damage what we cherish most.

I remember a woman whose husband, from the moment he was diagnosed with cancer until the moment he died, refused to talk about it. The frozen river of grief he left behind was palpable.

Now, in a final act of generosity, James’ family has announced, on his instruction, that he took control of his life’s end by choosing VAD.

More than that, they have shared with us what that choice, and the control it offered James, meant to them all. That he was able to have a living wake on Valentine’s Day, surrounded by family and his dearest friends, so that farewells could be made. Knowing James, there would have been plenty of humour and good music.

That the Governor-General, Sam Mostyn, was able to bestow a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for James’ services as a broadcaster and to the community on him last weekend. How brilliant that he could live to be so honoured.

Above all, that he could live fully until he could live no more. As his children put it, “the thing that sticks out in this period has been one of pure joy with him and love”.

That James, his wife, Jo, and Roy and Ruby want this known means more than you might imagine.

Even though VAD has been legal in Victoria for six years and NSW, now, for more than two, and even though more than 7000 Australians have taken this choice, its very mention remains off-limits for many.

Families are afraid to raise it with doctors, lest they be judged for their choice or given the cold shoulder.

Some health institutions and aged-care facilities, many marching under the banner of “mercy”, are openly hostile to VAD and clear in their intentions to discourage people from using it. Happy to receive taxpayers’ money, it seems, but not their values.

This silence is even written into law, specifically a Commonwealth ban on the use of telehealth for VAD. Reinforcing the idea that VAD can’t be spoken of, or if it is, only ever in hush-hush tones and face to face. The AMA recognises the harm this causes and, for two years now, have called on Attorney-General Michelle Rowland to amend the law. So far, that call has fallen on deaf ears.

At Go Gentle Australia, we see how the silence and stigma that surrounds VAD plays out in people’s lives – of an elderly woman choosing VAD put on suicide watch by her nursing home; of a palliative care service refusing to certify a mother’s body because she had chosen VAD, then denying the daughter access to bereavement support; of elderly, dying people being smuggled out of faith-based facilities, away from their friends, on their last day alive, terrified they will be stopped by staff because they had chosen VAD.

A year ago, I joined James and clinical psychologist Dr Kerrie Noonan in a long and open discussion on an episode of his podcast he called “Let’s Talk About Death, Baby”.

At the end, I could see James getting emotional, and I asked him what he was feeling. Confessing he was on the verge of tears, he said “I’m taking a deep breath to calm, so I can’t talk, not necessarily to squash it … I’m probably just contemplating my own death”.

Then the three of us hugged. For his courage and openness, I wish I could hug him again today.

Andrew Denton is founding director of Go Gentle Australia

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