Page 4385 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 19 November 1991
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It gives me pleasure to raise this issue in the Assembly today. I hope that we will continue the debate and move closer to the time when appropriate legislation is brought into this house.
MR HUMPHRIES (3.39): Mr Deputy Speaker, it appears to be open season on bishops. This is the second senior cleric who has been attacked in this Assembly in as many months. It is not a terribly encouraging trend on the part of the legislature.
Mr Moore: I did not attack the bishop; I attacked what he said. I quoted and attacked what he said.
MR HUMPHRIES: With respect to Mr Moore's comments about the Catholic Church's views or Archbishop Carroll's views in particular, it is unfortunate that the debate needs to degenerate into a fairly personal and extremely vociferous attack on another person's views in order to furnish some kind of discussion at the level Mr Moore would like to see it occur. I, for one, do not think that is appropriate. If Mr Moore expects to get any genuine and rational debate in the community, he should do it without making comments of that kind. However, that is Mr Moore's funeral, if you will excuse the pun, and we have to take that as it comes.
I am pleased in one sense to see that we are not today debating the guidelines that were referred to on the ABC some weeks ago when this issue was first raised. At that time it was reported that Mr Moore intended to put guidelines before the Assembly and that those guidelines would be the basis for future legislation in the Territory governing euthanasia. Mr Moore has rightly indicated that this would be premature, and I think he is wise not to proceed with anything more concrete at this stage. The brevity of the title of this matter of public importance certainly assists in that regard. I also think it would be inappropriate this late in the Assembly's life to be moving major pieces of social engineering, as it were, and for that reason this debate should be left as general as possible.
This is obviously a debate where one should exercise a personal view, and the views I will put are very much mine rather than the Liberal Party's. In that respect, it is unfortunate - in fact, I will go further and say that it is disgraceful - that the Australian Labor Party now has a position, if the newspapers are to be believed, which binds its members on the floor of this Assembly with respect to the issue of euthanasia. That is, they have a party position which, under Labor Party rules, is binding upon members and a breach of which has the potential to cause expulsion or other disciplinary action against a member of the ALP.
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