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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (5 November) . . Page.. 3670 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Yes, it is a very unusual manoeuvre to ask the Director of Public Prosecutions to have the ability to put an expiation notice on somebody when a police officer has chosen not to. But this is unusual legislation. It is unusual legislation because it works within the framework set by the appalling piece of legislation that Kevin Andrews managed to get through the Federal Parliament.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, do not forget, already dismisses such cases and has actually dismissed such cases completely. All it would do is give the Director of Public Prosecutions yet another choice. There are a number of doctors - I think it was seven doctors in Victoria - who have said, "I have done this; I have assisted somebody to die". They challenged the Director of Public Prosecutions to take them to court. What did the DPP in Victoria say? He said, "I am not going to take you to court". When asked why, he said, "It is their prerogative, and an appropriate prerogative; it is in the public interest that I not take you to court". Of course, it would have been a waste of taxpayers' money, because no jury in this country is going to find somebody guilty under these circumstances.

Whilst we will not pass this legislation, and it is clear that it is not going to pass, that would have put some regulation into the process - not as much as if we had dealt with it in the piece of legislation that we dealt with back in November 1995, but it would at least have set out a regulatory pattern. But instead what we get is, "We will leave this to the common law". It is quite clear that under the common law nobody will be found guilty. It happened here quite recently when a man helped his elderly brother - you may recall the case - by taking him from a nursing home in a car, putting a hose on the exhaust pipe and putting it through the window for him. He was found not guilty. But what an awful way to have to assist somebody to die! What an awful agony those two brothers must have gone through!

It seems to me that that deals with another point that Mr Humphries raised, namely, that this sort of legislation will bring the law into disrepute. No, Mr Humphries, the sort of legislation that we have now is what brings the law into disrepute, because of the way situations like that are dealt with. That is what brings the law into disrepute. It seems to me that his comment about it being a technical way of dealing with the problem is absolutely accurate. It is not my favourite way. My favourite way was when I introduced the law at the beginning of this Assembly. It was much cleaner. The Federal Government prevented us from doing that. So, I sought a technical way to deal with it, because I am not a quitter and because there was a way of still dealing with it, and that is the legislation that is before you.

Mr Humphries raised a very sensible question about why you would put different degrees of penalty because of people's different qualifications. Well, that is the structure of the Bill. The structure of the Bill is that, if somebody has the pertinent qualifications to be able to assist somebody in these circumstances, then it would be appropriate for the community to look at it in a different way; hence, the slight variation between

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