Religious leaders have told NSW lawmakers that the sanctity of human life means voluntary assisted dying should not be legalised.
The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, the Grand Mufti of Australia, and Jewish, Presbyterian and Baptist leaders on Friday voiced their opposition to the reform at a parliamentary inquiry.
The upper house committee is considering a draft law that would make NSW the last Australian state to allow the terminally ill to choose to end their lives, after the parliament's lower house passed it last month.
The bill would allow a person with less than six months to live to end their lives with the sign-off of two doctors.
Archbishop Anthony Fisher told the inquiry the law would be a "radical departure from one of the foundational principles of our society".
"It confirms in law that some people are regarded as better off dead," he said.
"Our legal system, health professionals and care institutions will help to make them dead."
The views of the Catholic Church should be heeded not just out of respect for religion, Archbishop Fisher said, but because they are one of the largest providers of health care, aged care and palliative care in the world.
He said the bill represents a "serious attack" on the freedom of religious hospitals and aged care facilities to operate in accordance with their ethos.
Grand Mufti Ibrahim Abu Mohamed told MPs through an interpreter that life was a gift given by God and that only God could withdraw it.
He objected to the terminology of "voluntary assisted dying".
When death is assisted by another it becomes homicide, he said.
In the Jewish faith, a human being is the "crown jewel of God's creation" and is part of God on earth, Rabbi Nochum Schapiro, the president of the Rabbinical Council of NSW, said.
Seeking to end one's life because one is in pain suggests that a person is looking at what life can give them, when they should instead consider life a mission to bring goodness and light into the world, he said.
Both Archbishop Fisher and Rabbi Schapiro related their own experiences of being hospitalised with medical conditions.
Spending five months in hospital after Guillain-Barre syndrome left him paralysed from the neck down gave Archbishop Fisher the experience of the kind of suffering that makes people want to end it all, he said.
Rabbi Schapiro had an "incredibly painful" haemorrhage twelve years ago.
"I just wanted it to end," he said.
"Thank God I was able to overcome the weeks of pain and live what I hope is a productive life for the twelve years since."
The religious leaders are among 37 witnesses slated to give evidence in a packed hearing on Friday.
The committee is racing to consider the bill and report back to the Legislative Council before parliament resumes next year.
It will hold one further hearing next week, after hearing from the bill's supporters on Wednesday.
Archbishop Fisher was critical of the process, saying it was perhaps the shortest inquiry of any committee in the history of the NSW parliament.
"No, it's not," retorted Nationals MP Trevor Khan.
The archbishop criticised the timing, as he said health professionals were over-stretched by the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing them from contributing to the debate.
