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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (9 April) . . Page.. 800 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

I do not support euthanasia. In this place I spoke very strongly against euthanasia. But I also do not support the Federal Parliament exercising powers of the kind it did in the case of the Andrews Bill to override the proper determination by the people of Canberra of what they wanted on that subject. I did not believe then and I do not believe now that it is appropriate for the Federal Parliament to bestow self-government on the people of the ACT, as they did in 1988, and then to withdraw the privileges, the responsibilities, that carries with it as they see fit. As Mr Moore said this morning in the course of his comments about the euthanasia legislation, it leaves a question mark at the back of all legislators' minds in both the ACT and the Northern Territory as to the occasions on which some decision we might care to make might be overridden potentially by the Federal Government or the Federal Parliament.

I think we ought to be the masters of our own destiny. We ought to be seeing the directions for our Territory's future, and there is clearly a strong paternalistic approach by the Federal Parliament towards the ACT and its people. That is typified by comments made regularly by members of both major parties and others denigrating the concept of Canberra, denigrating Canberra as a generic term when they mean the Federal Government or possibly the Federal Parliament. I oppose that kind of generalisation because it fails to acknowledge that there is a large community of people in this place who have interests that are very different from those of the Federal Government and the Federal Parliament. Sometimes they are servants of the Federal Government and the Federal Parliament, very often they are dependent on the health and vitality of the Federal Public Service; nonetheless, they are a discrete community from the Federal Government. They should not be tarred with the decisions of the Federal Government. They are entitled to be recognised by the Australian people as a community with separate interests and appropriate needs that need to be addressed.

The very underpinnings of the system of democratic government, I think, were dealt a blow by the Andrews Bill, and that is on two fronts. The Andrews Act, as it now is, discriminates on the basis of residence, and the Act also strikes at the principle of self-determination. The Act does not create a law that applies to all Australians. That is the key, I think, of the objection I have. It is an Act that applies only to those citizens who live in the two Territories - the Northern Territory and the ACT - and incidentally in the external Territories; it applies only to those people. A parliament duly constituted in another State is able to legislate for these matters and could do so tomorrow. The ACT and Northern Territory parliaments cannot. When the Federal Parliament used words to express its desires for the course of self-government, which it created in 1988, there would have to have been an element of rhetoric in that, given what has subsequently happened.

I repeat that I have no misgivings or qualms about stating clearly and explicitly that my first duty is to the people of the ACT. I would hope some others in this place would take a similar approach, and I would hope they would join us in acknowledging that the approach of the Federal Parliament has been paternalistic and has been dismissive, and that we are entitled to greater respect for our views, for our decisions made by the elected members of this place, than has been shown us in recent days.

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