Victoria, Australia has seen a 400% increase in cases of euthanasia over a five-year period, as the region intends to expand the law further from next year.
According to the annual report released earlier this month, there was a 59.09% increase in instances of euthanasia for the year 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, when there were 140 cases of euthanasia, compared with the previous year, when there were 88.
The report also reveals the total deaths by assisted suicide and euthanasia in 2025-26 were almost four times higher than the first year of operation in 2019-20, accounting for 1.1% of all deaths in Victoria in 2025-26.
There were a total of 512 deaths by euthanasia and assisted suicide in 2025-26, an increase of 31.62% from the previous year.
Over the course of just a year, the number of applicants for assisted suicide and euthanasia who did not access palliative care increased from 118 in 2024-25 to 179 in 2025-26, an increase of over 50%.
Since 2019, when the state began ending the lives of some of its own citizens by assisting in their suicides and by euthanasia, to the end of June this year, a total of 2,188 people have ended their lives by assisted suicide and euthanasia in Victoria. The number of people who have ended their lives in this way has increased by 153.47% in the five years from the year 2020-21 to the year 2025-26.
Of the 512 deaths in 2025-26, 372 (72.66%) were instances of assisted suicide, where the person who wishes to die ingests or otherwise takes the lethal substance themselves, and 140 (27.34%) were instances of euthanasia, where a medical practitioner administers the lethal substance to the patient to end their life.
Only three applications in the year 2025-26 involved referral for an additional assessment concerning decision-making capacity. Since assisted suicide and euthanasia were made legal in June 2019, there have only been 38 such referrals.
Significant expansion of assisted suicide and euthanasia law in Victoria to take place in 2027
In 2027, a significant expansion of the assisted suicide and euthanasia law is set to take place in Victoria. This change was agreed only six years after the law came into effect in June 2019.
The raft of changes made by the Government of Victoria, Australia, includes increasing the prognosis limit for those who want to end their lives by assisted suicide or euthanasia from six to 12 months and ending the restriction on doctors raising the possibility of assisted suicide or euthanasia with one of their patients unprompted, according to reports.
Previously, individuals had to have been given a prognosis of death within six months in order to access state assisted suicide or euthanasia, unless they had been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease, in which case their prognosis could be extended to those with a life expectancy of 12 months. Now, the law has been changed to double the eligible life expectancy to 12 months for all conditions.
Doctors will also be allowed, for the first time, to raise the topic of state-assisted suicide and euthanasia unprompted with patients thought to be nearing the end of their lives, as well as requiring health practitioners who conscientiously object to assisted suicide and euthanasia to provide information to patients.
According to reports, the requirement for individuals with a neurodegenerative condition to have a third assessment before being able to end their lives by assisted suicide or euthanasia has also been removed. The time limit between the first and second access requests has been decreased, from nine days to only five days.
The eligibility rules have also been changed to allow people who have lived in Australia for only three years to end their lives by assisted suicide or euthanasia, even if they are not citizens or permanent residents of the country.
Additionally, changes to the law have been made to make it easier for medical practitioners to join the programme to administer assisted suicide. The eligibility rules for practitioners have been changed to make it easier for them to get involved in the programme, while permits have been simplified and a new administrative practitioner role has been created.
According to the new annual report on assisted suicide and euthanasia in Victoria, the Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board “expects further growth in [assisted suicide and euthanasia] applications following the legislative change”.
Alisdair Hungerford-Morgan, Chief Executive of Right To Life UK, said: “Euthanasia deaths in Victoria have risen by 400% in five years and they rose by nearly 60% in the last year alone”.
“Sadly, as in other jurisdictions, once assisted dying is made legal, often more and more people have their lives ended every year”.
“This will likely only get worse once the law expands. The removal of safeguards and the expansion of assisted suicide and euthanasia in Victoria, Australia, is a very concerning development. It provides yet another example of how the slippery slope of assisted suicide so often becomes a reality, and that there is a clear tendency towards reducing safeguards and widening the eligibility criteria in places where assisted suicide has been legalised”.
“The surging number of deaths in Victoria shows why MPs in Westminster were right to reject assisted suicide this month. People nearing the end of their lives deserve protection and the best possible care, not a pathway to suicide”.
