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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (1 March) . . Page.. 465 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

Commonwealth to intervene in the laws of his State which he goes on to say he supports. Clare Martin, the Opposition Leader in the Northern Territory, has made it very clear that, although she does not support the legislation, she believes it is inappropriate to have Federal government interference in the laws of that State. Her view is that the best approach is to change the government.

That is quite a large number of Labor leaders in this country. Mr Beazley, the Federal Opposition Leader, said after the Labor leaders meeting last week:

Mr Beazley also accepts that there is not agreement even amongst Labor leaders in this area. Why? Because the issue of states rights is so fundamental to our system of government in this country and to the rights of States and Territories to legislate on behalf of the people who elect them. I do not believe this parliament should get into the business of putting its oar in. If we do that, it will be five seconds before other States start doing it to us.

If we had a debate on mandatory sentencing in this house, I do not believe it would be within cooee of getting up. I do not believe there would be many people in this Assembly who would support mandatory sentencing laws. But that is not the issue, just as it was not the issue with euthanasia, supervised injecting rooms or any other law that we choose to pass in this place that others - the Federal Government or other States - may believe is totally inappropriate.

This is an important issue, because it will come back to haunt us if we take any approach other than the one that I have put on the table. This Assembly has traditionally led the debate in many social policy areas. I think that is something we should continue to do, but in many areas we have a huge amount of resistance and outright opposition in other States. If we get into the business of interfering in other States' legislation, then it will be extraordinarily difficult to argue that they should not get involved in ours.

MR KAINE (4.31): It is with some regret that I do not support this motion. I say "with some regret" because I know that in putting forward this motion Ms Tucker has all the best intentions. She seeks to achieve something which she believes is in the community interest and for the community good. My problem is that the motion as presented achieves nothing. It is an ineffective motion. It does not even talk about anybody; it talks about an inanimate object, a submission's failure to achieve certain things.

I am not clear what it is that Ms Tucker is seeking to achieve by this motion. What is her objective? What outcome does she desire? Even if we were to pass this motion today, it would achieve absolutely nothing. It calls on nobody to take any action, not even the ACT Government. It expresses an opinion. After listening for some hours, I find there is no view. Almost everybody who has spoken in this debate has a different view. Members have focused on different aspects of the problem. There is no consensus in this place about what the outcome should be, even if it were expressed in the motion, which it is not. I do not know what, if any, practical purpose can eventuate whether we pass this motion or not.

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