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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (15 February) . . Page.. 41 ..

MS TUCKER: This question is to the Chief Minister, and I did give prior notice of it. I note that the ACT Government's submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee inquiry into mandatory sentencing opposed the Commonwealth Government overriding the Northern Territory's mandatory sentencing law. The position of the ACT Government was that such a use of treaties power should only be considered in the most extreme, urgent and compelling cases. In light of the recent well-publicised and tragic death of a young man from Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory detained for 28 days after stealing textas and paint, does the Chief Minister and this Government now agree that we face such an urgent, extreme and compelling case, and will the Government reconsider their position?

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am very pleased that Ms Tucker gave me notice but I have to say that on this matter I really would not have needed notice. Mr Speaker, I find Ms Tucker's position on this absolutely amazing, taking into account that in this Assembly we argued, I think as a whole, absolutely stringently and stridently to suggest that the Federal Government's approach on euthanasia legislation was totally unacceptable. I will quote Ms Tucker in that debate where she said:

She did go on from there, Mr Speaker. I would have to say that it is hard to think of an issue more compelling than the issue of life and death and euthanasia, and we argued as an Assembly to suggest that the Federal Government should not interpose itself between appropriately elected governments of the territories and their voters basically. The people in the Northern Territory elected their Government, as did the people in Western Australia, but at the moment we are talking about territories. Those people have a capacity to get rid of those governments if they do not like the approach they took. I believe, as I am sure most people here do, that the recent tragic death of the young man from Groote Eylandt was shocking. I think a large number of people in this Assembly would not support the sort of legislation that went through either the Northern Territory or the Western Australian parliaments; but the fact is that it did go through an appropriately elected parliament.

If I were to say now that we should reverse our position on this particular circumstance, how long, Ms Tucker, would it be before the Federal Government said, "Now that the Chief Minister and the Assembly have changed their position, we will pass a little bit of legislation on supervised injecting places."? Some people would be happy about that, Mr Speaker. I can see you nodding. Mr Speaker, I think even people like you who do not support SIPs would not support the Federal Government's right to put itself above the rights of this Assembly to make laws for ourselves, and that is what this is about. The heroin trial and SIPs were good examples. Another is euthanasia laws. There have been a number of others, Mr Speaker, where there has been some level of muscle-flexing in the Federal Parliament suggesting that they might like to legislate on our behalf.

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