The Law of Unintended but Predictable Consequences doesn’t always operate in a straight line.

Take, for instance, the big news story of this week.

No, not the arrival of South Australia’s “historic” voluntary assisted dying laws. Nothing that depressing, but we’ll get to that in just a tick.

Instead, it’s the news that soon it’ll be raining mushies in Adelaide.

On Tuesday, South Australia’s Minister of Trade and Investment, Nick Champion, pumped out a media release with the news we’ve all been waiting for.

“Adelaide is set to become the exotic mushroom capital of Australia with the establishment of the nation’s largest exotic mushroom farm and processing facility at the former GM Holden site, creating hundreds of jobs,” he announced.

For a bloke who rarely shifts gear out of L for laconic, Champs almost sounded excited.

The $110 million facility will be “Australia’s only vertically integrated mushroom plant” producing more than 20,000 tonnes of exotic mushrooms and mushroom products each year in a big shed at Holden’s sadly-abandoned Elizabeth factory.

Who says The Almighty doesn’t have a sense of humour?

The joke runs that voters and mushrooms are treated the same way – kept in the dark and fed horse manure.

So, the state with the nation’s most secretive, and now courtesy of our parliament, most gutless corruption watchdog, where our law courts hand out suppression orders like lollies, where journalists have threadbare protection from defamation action, where councils regularly meet behind closed doors, is to become the home of The Big Mushroom. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

If the ambitious venture fails – and let’s hope it doesn’t and that the 31 jobs do mushroom into the promised 350 – surely all will not be lost.

Another enterprising soul could simply pivot the big Holden shed into growing psychedelic magic mushrooms instead.

After all, South Australians seem to have a fabulous talent for growing dope illegally, just imagine what we could achieve if we broadened our horizons to cement our reputation as the nation’s Cheech and Chong capital city.

If only our hospitals were so well coordinated, ramping would be fixed overnight.

The saturation use of illegal drugs in SA – not just marijuana but the even more damaging crystal meth – is a case study in the Law of Unintended but Predictable Consequences.

It has lessons for the Malinauskas Government, its enthusiastic Attorney-General, Kyam Maher, and all those law-makers who folded their cards and passed the voluntary assisted dying legislation.

When SA became the first state to decriminalise the personal use of marijuana in 1987, it was done in the face of warnings it would make the state a magnet for the illegal growing and trafficking of drugs.

The then Bannon Labor Government argued it would have the opposite effect – that if people could grow a few plants for personal use, it’d knock off demand for wacky baccy from dealers. It was wrong.

Labor Premier John Bannon once quickly corrected one of his minders, the late Geoff Anderson, who was boasting to me that Labor had legalised cannabis use.

Bannon said they’d decriminalised, not legalised the drug. In his book, it was an important distinction.

In practice, it made no difference. The “reform” did what the pro-drug urgers knew it would – sent a signal that marijuana was harmless because its cultivation and use had now been endorsed by the government.

And, of course, Bannon argued the legislation had sufficient safeguards in place to ensure everything would remain tickety-boo.

Why do politicians always believe this advice? Is it a case of being gullible, or needing to believe it to justify voting for legislation that, deep down, they fear is wrong.

History is repeating itself with the activation on Tuesday, the same day as the mushroom factory announcement, of the “historic” voluntary assisted dying law, or VAD for short.

Despite this being historic, it ranked below the day’s mushroom story on Seven news, coming in way down the bulletin, just after Mark “Soda” Soderstrom’s sports promo, in the spot normally reserved for “funny hats” stories.

Media placements aside, one consistent element in all the reporting was that the right of terminally-ill South Australians to choose to die with dignity had finally arrived “after 16 previous attempts spanning 27 years”.

This line from the government’s media releases has been repeated like a mantra this week. So, it took our parliament 17 goes over 27 years to make it happen? Big deal. Another way of looking at it is that over that same 27 years, the parliament cautiously and sensibly rejected, 16 times, a law that is profoundly disturbing.

The pro-VAD lobby and the MPs who voted for this bristle at the use of the term “voluntary euthanasia” to describe the VAD reform. It doesn’t sound nice.

They reject the even more unpalatable but accurate description of what the VAD law is at its heart – state-sponsored suicide.

It is an inconvenient truth, but call it what it is.

This article by InDaily’s political reporter Stephanie Richards is an excellent, sobering, step-by-step explainer to how the voluntary assisted dying process will work in real life, or death, depending on the individual’s choice.

The details of how the assisted dying process will work reveals the state is involved at almost every step, including ensuring the mandatory training of doctors who sign up to deliver it.

The South Australian Voluntary Assisted Dying Care Navigator Service runs under the SA Health umbrella, with “care navigators” who will “manage queries, encourage connections between services, and support referrals to participating medical practitioners”. If only our hospitals were so well coordinated, ramping would be fixed overnight.

The government has sought to cover every base, including providing a locked box with the lethal drugs for people who qualify for assisted dying. Because none of us leave keys lying around at home, do we?

The government says VAD is available for people who meet strict criteria, including having an incurable, advanced and progressive disease, illness, or medical condition expected to cause death within six months (or 12 months for a neurodegenerative condition), and that is causing suffering to the person that cannot be relieved in a tolerable manner.
It says the Act includes some 70 safeguards to “ensure only eligible people can access VAD and protect vulnerable people from coercion, abuse, and exploitation”.

But we know the Greens and other proponents already regard this legislation as a watered-down compromise. They see it as the beginning, not the end. Many safeguards will be tinkered with or scrapped by this or future parliaments, with continual pressure to extend it to the disabled, the mentally ill or those just sick of life.

The voluntary assisted dying process launched on Tuesday will be open as a solution to more fields of human suffering within 10 years, or possibly sooner.

The Law of Unintended but Predictable Consequences will kick in. The unintended but predictable signal to the community is clear – the government not only endorses you taking your own life, it will help you do so.

Premier Peter Malinauskas, who happily fronts up for photo opps for everything from Cosi’s big Santa to free parking for shoppies, left the main media duties for this one to Attorney-General Maher and Health Minister Chris Picton. It’s not a sin, just interesting, that’s all.

Those who were silently opposed to this troubling new law were too silent or too timid, including the Adelaide Catholic archdiocese.

But, after 27 years and 16 failed attempts, the debate has been won, fairly and squarely, in a democratic process.

The people who fought hard for this legislation – with many genuinely heartbreaking personal experiences – and the MPs who supported the cause, acted with integrity and the very best intent. One day, I may thank them.

But for now, like a mushroom, keep me in the dark.

Matthew Abraham’s weekly analysis of local politics is published on Fridays.

Matthew can be found on Twitter as @kevcorduroy. It’s a long story.

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