In the first 24 hours since launching Hem's Law, over 2,000 people have signed, and more than 23,000 have read the petition. I am overwhelmed and grateful.

I have also heard from people who hesitated - not because they don't believe in what happened to Hem, but because they are worried about the potential for misuse. Specifically, the concern that this law could be used by a family member to end a life prematurely, or that it could become a vehicle for elder abuse.

I want to address that directly. Because I understand what is behind the concern....and the answer is the most important thing to understand about Hem's Law.

Hem's Law cannot be used to end a life early. That is not a policy choice. It is a medical impossibility.

Here is why.

Hem's Law can only be invoked when ALL of the following have been independently confirmed:

• Loss of swallowing - confirmed by a doctor or speech pathologist. This is not a subjective assessment. It is a clinical fact. Either the person can swallow, or they cannot.
• Active dying phase - certified independently by two medical practitioners, confirming that death is already occurring and that comfort care is the only remaining clinical pathway. This is not a prognosis. It is a confirmation that the dying process has begun and cannot be reversed.
• Written confirmation - by the decision-maker, with independent legal and medical witness.

Every single one of these criteria must be met simultaneously. If any one of them is not met, if there is any clinical ambiguity, any question about whether the person has truly entered the active dying phase, the provision cannot be invoked.

This is not a family deciding whether a life is worth living.

By the time Hem's Law applies, medicine has already made the only determination that matters: this person is dying, right now, and there is no other outcome. The only question that remains, the only question this law addresses, is whether the final days will be peaceful or whether they will be spent starving.

The gate is not the family's grief. It is not their judgment about quality of life. It is not their relationship with the person dying, or what they stand to inherit, or how tired they are from years of caring.

The gate is the clinical threshold. Two independent doctors must hold it. And they can only open it when death has already begun.

A note on the opt-out provision - because this matters too.

Hem's Law includes a legally binding opt-out. Any person who does not want this option available to them for any reason - personal, cultural, or religious - can record that instruction formally at any time through their GP, a solicitor, or a health department form. That instruction is binding on any substitute decision-maker and on the medical practitioners involved. No application can proceed if an opt-out is recorded.

Nobody receives a death they did not want. That is not a reassurance, it is a legal requirement built into the reform itself.

To those who hesitated

Your instinct to protect yourselves or your own loved ones is right and it is honourable. Hem's Law is not asking you to trust a family member's judgment. It is asking you to trust the medical profession's, at the moment they have already determined, independently and on the record, that death has begun.

If you would like to ensure this provision is never available to you under any circumstances, the opt-out is there. It is yours to take. But please do not let a misunderstanding of the safeguards stand between you and the 15,000 Australians who will die the way Hem died this year.....who had no choice, and no voice, and no one permitted to help them.

To everyone who has already signed:

Thank you. When people ask you why you signed, or when they hesitate signing themselves - this is the answer you can give them. Not because you trust every family to make the right decision. But because you trust two independent doctors to confirm when death has already begun. And because you believe that at that moment, peace should be a legal option.

Hem's suffering - and that of so many others - will not be for nothing. Please keep sharing.