Page 682 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 31 March 2021
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country, that it was choosing to treat citizens within its own country differently regarding what they can and cannot legislate for on the basis of where they live. If it did not send alarm bells ringing then, it should have since. That is because, while the Northern Territory was the first jurisdiction to consider and pass relevant legislation in the 1990s, for many, many years now states have been very prominently debating voluntary assisted dying legislation, even if unsuccessfully.
Now the alarm bells should be clanging. They certainly are for us in this place. They are clanging because three of the six states have now legislated for voluntary assisted dying—Victoria in 2017, Western Australia in 2019 and Tasmania in 2021. Ten million Australians now have access to voluntary assisted dying schemes. More importantly, 10 million Australians have been able to participate democratically, through their parliaments, in having this issue debated and voted on.
Those are just the parliaments that have passed the legislation. The remaining state parliaments are also currently debating legislation, like South Australia, or will later this year, like Queensland and New South Wales—all of them. Through their parliaments, the vast majority of Australians will be able to participate in this important democratic process, simply by virtue of living in a state. But not citizens of the ACT, and not citizens of the Northern Territory.
The thing is that the only body which can restore these powers to us is the same one which took them away 24 years ago—the federal parliament. I do speak of the federal parliament as a whole, because it is the responsibility of all federal parliamentarians to ensure that this untenable situation ends. They should have prioritised this years ago, of course. We appeal to them today to prioritise this now. This situation is needless and senseless; it always has been. They, and only they, have the power to change it. They just need the will.
In appealing to the federal parliament, it is my strong view that the federal government needs to show leadership here, first and foremost. They have the most power to introduce legislation. They have the very important power of deciding what bills, no matter by whom they have been introduced, should be brought on for debate.
While several bills have been presented over many years, just one—just one—has the federal government allowed to come on for debate. When asked about resolving this senseless situation, the federal government—ministers, including first law officers—have repeatedly said that it is not a priority. How can the rights of citizens in their own country not be a priority? How can the citizens in their own capital not be a priority?
It should not have taken the Northern Territory Attorney-General and I to have to remind the federal government that Australia is a party to international human rights obligations. These obligations extend to how they treat citizens in their own country. But remind them we have. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia is a party, guarantees citizens the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives. By prohibiting the citizens of the ACT and Northern Territory from deciding for themselves, through their elected representatives, whether to legislate for voluntary assisted dying, the restrictions placed on us by the Euthanasia Laws Act 1997 may be limiting this right.
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