West Australian Upper House MP Nick Goiran has said that repeated personal attacks and media vilification against opponents of proposed euthanasia laws served as the cornerstone of the campaign that ultimately won public support for the controversial legislation. Amid acrimonious debate over the issue, Western Australia’s largest newspaper ran the following front-page headline: “RIP Democracy Died: November 22, 2019.” The story targeted Goiran, who was the lead figure—or “lightning rod” as his colleagues referred to him—challenging the impending Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill. Goiran described the newspaper piece as “water off a duck’s back,” but it was damaging to the pro-life campaign. “There is a tactic to simply identify a high-profile individual and vilify them and make them the villain in the campaign,” Goiran told The Epoch Times. “They were consistently prosecuting arguments that would refer to me as an ‘extreme conservative’ or ‘extreme fundamentalist,’ who blocked the passage of this …