Page 326 - Week 01 - Thursday, 27 February 2014
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Further on the topic of necessary regulation, I would like to point out that the federal government is currently trying to remove 74,000 hectares of Tasmanian forest from world heritage protection. Such a move has been condemned by both the logging industry and environmental groups. It is considered that this deal is likely to plunge the region back into the protracted forestry conflicts of past decades. Laws and regulations like the carbon tax and world heritage listing are not developed just for fun; they are developed because they deliver a public good that the community has identified as necessary.
If we talk about unnecessary laws, I would like to raise the federal legislation known as the Andrews bill that took away the right of the ACT to make laws with regard to euthanasia. The bill inserted section 23(1A) into the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act, and it still exists. It says:
The Assembly has no power to make laws permitting or having the effect of permitting … the form of intentional killing of another called euthanasia … or the assisting of a person to terminate his or her life.
It is like we in the ACT being able to make our own laws in relation to civil unions. The ACT has now come of age and we deserve to be able to make our own laws in relation to anything that does not conflict with the federal constitution, just as other states are able to do. This includes euthanasia. Obviously, as we discussed at some length yesterday, this is a sensitive topic and one that will need, necessarily, an entire community conversation before this Assembly would want to move. But, at the same time, I think it is an affront to democracy that somebody bothered to put a law in place simply to take away our right to do our job as the ACT parliament.
It is also an affront to the people of the ACT. ACT residents want to be able to make choices about their own life and death. A Newspoll survey from 2012 found that 82.5 per cent of Australians believe that a terminally ill person should be allowed to access physician-assisted suicide. It is not easy these days to find an issue that this many Australians would agree on. Policymakers in Australia are lagging behind the community, and we have to be brave enough to tackle this very difficult issue. The Legislative Assembly should be able to legislate on this issue, just as the states of Australia can, free of unnecessary laws implemented by Kevin Andrews and his associates in the federal parliament.
When it comes to planning and building issues, I often hear concerns raised about excessive government regulations. We had that discussion again yesterday. As I said, I can understand that people get frustrated at times; there certainly are many rules. But at the same time, most of these regulations are there for a good reason, such as ensuring building safety and quality. Over the past decade we have heard many complaints about shoddy building construction. The Liberals have joined in on these concerns at times, if I remember rightly, because our constituents—all of our constituents—have been raising these concerns. It is precisely these government regulations that we need to ensure that these problems do not arise.
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