Page 2978 - Week 10 - Friday, 8 October 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
waiting for a reply, of having to follow up several times, we got one line about the commonwealth’s supposed policy. After seven months, we got no explanation for it. You know why, I know why, and the Australian public knows why. It is because there is no explanation for it. The commonwealth government and its first law officer cannot even defend the position. She does not even try. The truth is, they have not tried for years. They ignore questions time after time; and when they are eventually pressured into answering, they offer the one line. It is not good enough. We demand better.
Not only that; the Attorney-General signs her name to a letter which ignores human rights issues. The Attorney-General is the minister responsible for human rights policy in the commonwealth government, and she cannot even bring herself, in her correspondence, to reference the incredibly serious issues—issues that call into question the Australian government’s commitment to human rights obligations. The commonwealth government cannot even take human rights issues, democratic rights, rights to participate in public life equally, seriously in its own country. That makes it an international embarrassment.
The commonwealth government cannot continue to evade, to distract, to ignore, to dismiss. We will not let them. It is indefensible that they have even attempted to do so in light of the situation right around the country, led by both Labor and Liberal governments. Shame on them. Shame on their lack of leadership. And if that was not enough, mid-year we learned that Country Liberal senator from the Northern Territory Sam McMahon planned to introduce the Ensuring Northern Territory Rights Bill. Central to that bill is an attempt to remove laws that limit the ability of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly to legislate for voluntary assisted dying if its Legislative Assembly chooses to do so.
The bill does not seek the same removal of laws for the ACT. This is because Senator McMahon consulted ACT Liberal Senator Seselja in the drafting of the bill and Senator Seselja explicitly requested the ACT not be included in seeking the removal of this prohibition. This is despite all parties in the ACT Legislative Assembly having urged the commonwealth government and parliament to lift the current restriction on ACT residents’ right to consider this issue, including explicitly on 31 March 2021.
This interaction between the two senators was widely reported when the bill was in its draft stage and it prompted an enormous amount of commentary, concern and outrage from the community—notably from, but not limited to, the ACT—that the ACT was not included. Despite this clear outcry, Senator McMahon refused to include the ACT in the bill before it was introduced. What does it tell us about Senator Seselja’s influence and how willing he is to defy the citizens he is supposed to represent, to defy the Canberra Liberals and the Canberra Liberals leader, that Senator McMahon felt that, even with all the feedback, including from this place in a tripartisan motion, she still could not include the ACT?
We utterly condemn Senator Seselja’s role in this. The commonwealth Attorney-General’s correspondence might be pathetic, but Senator Seselja’s intervention is disturbing. His actions actively and knowingly undermined the leader of the Canberra Liberals, which speaks to the health of the party in the ACT. It is also
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video