Page 681 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 31 March 2021
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(4) notes the stark inequity between states and territories clearly demonstrated in that, by mid-2021, all Australian states will have either passed legislation relating to voluntary assisted dying or have a bill before their parliament;
(5) draws the Federal Parliament’s attention to Australia’s international human rights obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Australia is a party, and which guarantees citizens the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives;
(6) expresses its disappointment that the Commonwealth Government and the broader Federal Parliament has not resolved, with haste, this untenable situation for the territories;
(7) acknowledges that there is a diversity of views about voluntary assisted dying in the ACT community;
(8) affirms that, regardless of one’s views about voluntary assisted dying, there should not be any controversy in allowing the ACT and Northern Territory to decide for themselves whether to introduce such legislation, and to allow citizens of the ACT an opportunity to legislate on this matter if their communities desire;
(9) calls on the Federal Parliament to:
(a) resolve that no Australian citizen should be disadvantaged or discriminated against with respect to their democratic or human rights on the basis of where they live; and
(b) introduce and bring on for debate a bill to remove subsections 23(1A) and (1B) from the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988 (Cth) by the end of 2021; and
(10) invites leaders of ACT Labor, ACT Greens and Canberra Liberals, responsible spokespersons and any other interested member of the ACT Legislative Assembly to sign a letter to all members and senators of Federal Parliament, which attaches this motion, by the end of this sitting week.
This past weekend, 27 March, marked 24 years—24 years—since the federal parliament passed cruel, needless, senseless legislation: legislation which restricted our democratic freedoms and democratic rights; legislation which banned the ACT and Northern Territory parliaments from deciding on the issue of voluntary assisted dying for themselves. That federal legislation was simple and it was devastating, in that straightforward amendments, new provisions in the ACT and Northern Territory’s self-government acts, rendered citizens of the territories as second-class.
The legislation did not just reverse the Northern Territory’s 1995 regime which legislated and regulated voluntary assisted dying for terminally ill patients; it removed the powers of either territory to legislate to allow for voluntary assisted dying ever again. By doing this, the federal parliament limited our citizens’ ability to participate democratically on something so fundamentally important—choice at the end of our lives.
It should have sent alarm bells ringing among many federal parliamentarians that the parliament was choosing to limit democratic freedoms of its own citizens in its own
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