Page 3658 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 21 November 2006
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I think it is important to put as many safeguards as possible in relation to the medical provisions and certainly those vexed questions of whether someone lives or does not live and the ethical problems of whether treatment is given or not given. I think it is important to recognise the law in the territory there and to make it crystal clear—because I do not think it is at present—that in no way can this bill assist in euthanasia. That is against the law. Indeed, that is now even in the powers of the Legislative Assembly in the self-government act of 1998 and hence the amendment I will be moving. I will speak more about that later.
This is a difficult area of law. Whilst there are still a few problems generally, I think the thrust of the bill is quite acceptable. It covers the issues. The way the tribunal operates too I think is a good thing. In most aspects I think there are some very big positives in this bill. I have highlighted some of those areas of concern.
This is something the opposition have been watching very carefully to ensure that abuses are not made. I appreciate that that is hard. It is always hard to completely stamp anything out, but we should try as best we can. We will be continuing to monitor how this bill operates in practice. The opposition will be supporting it and will be moving the amendment I mentioned.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (10.42): To a large extent, this bill is a welcome development in the consolidation and codification of substitute decision-making laws. But, as is increasingly the case as this government settles into its majority in the Assembly, the process of consultation which was undertaken in preparing this bill was deficient in a number of ways.
Yes; agreed that there was a good round of public consultation around 2002—I am not quite sure of the date, but early this century—in which community groups were engaged, forums were organised and views were actively sought from a wide range of stakeholders. That was good decision making in action, but then something went wrong.
The need for this bill arose after an inquiry into elder abuse identified the need to make changes for the powers of attorney regime. Elder abuse did not go away. Between 2001 and today we have heard regular stories about horrible examples of elder abuse involving breach of trust. Why did it take five years to come up with a legislative response? The anti-terror laws were rushed into existence in a number of months, even though we did not read regular stories about terrorist acts. We have not used those laws since.
The point is that these laws are well overdue. Given the gravity of the subject matter, I cannot accept that any excuse is valid. There may be reasons, such as resource constraints or competing priorities, but they are not excuses. Our old people deserve better than being effectively ignored for five years before laws are enacted to better protect them from abuse.
In the Attorney-General’s presentation speech he said:
People should have confidence in the law to protect their rights when they give powers to someone else to make decisions for them …
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