Page 3219 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 1994
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Mr Lamont: Who are the Knights of the Southern Cross?
MR DE DOMENICO: Madam Speaker, I will take the interjection from Mr Lamont and say that I do not care who the Knights of the Southern Cross are. As long as they are citizens of the ACT, they have just as much right as Mr Lamont and I do to express an opinion. If Mr Lamont wants to know who they are, I will give him a copy of their submission, which has their phone number on it, and he can ring them up and ask them. I am sure that they will tell him who they are.
Mr Lamont: That is a lovely response.
MR DE DOMENICO: Go and ask the Chief Minister, whom they wrote to, and she will tell you. Madam Speaker, we are standing here, debating this Bill, because we are seriously and conscientiously asking Mr Connolly to explain it. If he can answer the question, I would appreciate it. When someone says, "Please give me maximum relief from my suffering, Doctor", that request sounds quite reasonable. If "maximum relief from suffering" means a lethal dose of some pain relieving drug even though I am not terminally ill, does that mean that that can be done under this Bill? That is why I think that this clause and other clauses and amendments open up a Pandora's box about definitions, and that is why I will not be supporting the amendment.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (12.16): Madam Speaker, the answer to Mr De Domenico's question, which I answered about half an hour ago, on my interpretation of the Bill in its original form, is no. That is how I believe that the Bill in its original form would be interpreted if a court were faced with reading the history of the legislation - the presentation speech and the extensive work of the committee over nearly 12 months. So, I do not think that the wording in the original form would cover the lethal dose; but, to make that abundantly clear and to deal expressly with that circumstance, and because we do listen to community concerns, we have put in this provision to make something that we think is safe even safer.
I want to say two other things. Firstly, I object to Mr De Domenico speculating about what my view on this is and what my conscience on this would be. If he bothered to go and consult media clippings, files and such things, he would find statements of mine in support of the concept of natural death legislation that go back to the days when I first came to this Assembly. They go back to the period when I was in opposition, and I have consistently made such statements during the period that I have been in government. So, to try to suggest that I have some other personal view is just to play politics. I would thank him not to speculate on what my views on a subject may be. If he wants to know what my views are, I think that I am better at expressing them than he is.
A theme has emerged from a number of speakers opposite, who seem to want to speak at great length on this Bill as we get close to 12.30 pm. There have been repeated suggestions that the Government has somehow treated community input with contempt. That was demonstrated by Mr Humphries's amendment to change "I" to "II". It is true that what was clearly a typographical error was pointed out to us by the Right to Life Association. We took the view that that type of error would be fixed in the normal way, which is to go through the process of what is known as a Clerk's amendment.
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