Page 2981 - Week 10 - Friday, 8 October 2021
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contemptuous disregard for a great many Australians beggars belief. As Minister Cheyne has highlighted this morning in her remarks, I think the nature of the response from the federal Attorney-General underlines that notion that they simply can barely be bothered to lift a finger to deliver a very simple ask for the people of the territories, Australian citizens who deserve the right to be able to consider these matters for themselves.
Of course, while all this has been going on, the ACT’s only federal parliamentarian in the government, Senator Seselja, cannot decide whether he is evasive or opposed. This includes comments about how he might entertain a reform if it were in the context of territory rights generally but not a voluntary assisted dying-focused debate. It does seem awfully convenient to sidestep the clear desire of his constituents and arbitrarily tie his own hands. I encourage my Liberal colleagues in this place to put the case to Senator Seselja that the time has come for this sorry chapter in federal overreach to come to a close.
As I have mentioned, the Greens’ view is that the Andrews bill was wrong from the start. But even if you agreed with it at the time, both of its underlying premises have clearly worn out their welcome. At the time there appeared to be a dual rationale for denying the right to have this debate to citizens not enjoying the constitutional protections of statehood: firstly, that the issue was indeed a national one, because the Northern Territory’s legislation was so unique both within Australia and beyond that people were travelling from far and wide to access it; and, secondly, it was put that the Northern Territory and ACT legislatures were too immature to have debates on issues such as this.
Whatever you make of those 1996 arguments, neither is remotely tenable in 2021. In every single Australian jurisdiction not prohibited from doing so, this reform has been debated; and in five of six states, it has been legislated. Similarly, many nations have now legislated for voluntary assisted dying.
Thus it is clear that, whatever the national character debate may have had at the time back in 1996, it is clearly gone. It is a local issue held up at the federal level; and the question of our legislative maturity, insulting as it is, is certainly now irrelevant. Since all other jurisdictions have debated and five states have passed such legislation, it is now abundantly clear that there is no rationale for this differential treatment. It is actually almost perverse that, in an effort to stop territory legislatures leading the nation on this, the commonwealth has, in fact, held us back at the back of the pack. There is a real prospect that in the near future all states will have operating voluntary assisted dying schemes, and in the territories we cannot even consider it.
This legislature cannot even ask a committee to look at the matter. This legislature cannot, with a straight face, undertake consultation with our citizens because of these commonwealth laws, because we could not honestly go to the people and ask them the question, knowing that we were prevented from actually legislating it in this place. Territorians know how to grapple with difficult issues and yet we are arbitrarily barred, just on this one issue, singled out by conservatism from a bygone era. It is truly the very definition of an anachronism.
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