Former prime minister Tony Abbott has joined Paul Keating in urging Victorian politicians to oppose a euthanasia bill that has been passed by the lower house.
It will now go to the upper house where it's expected to face more opposition.
"I want them to block it and, at the very least, I would like them to delay it until after the next election so the public has more time to think about it," Mr Abbott told The Weekend Australian.
"I think we'll regard this is a sad milestone in our decline as a decent society.
"It marks our descent into a country which regards human beings as disposable, and we don't want anyone ever to be regarded as useless, worthless or disposable. But that's what this legislation says."
Before the vote, Mr Keating said politicians were missing the point as they debated for more than 24 hours the legal conditions and situations under which a person may end their own life.
Calling it a "deeply regressive legislation", Mr Keating said:
"What this means is that the civic guidance provided by the state, in our second largest state, is voided when it comes to the protection of our most valuable asset," Mr Keating said in a statement on Friday.
"To do or to cause to abrogate the core human instinct to survive and live, for the spirit to hang on against physical deprivations, is to turn one's back on the compulsion built into the hundreds of thousands of years of our evolution."
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