Page 2917 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 September 2014
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size of its Assembly without requiring the passage of commonwealth laws. I was on the committee that looked into that issue. Mr Hanson was on there with me, and I will quote a comment he made. He said:
Interestingly, the vast bulk if not all of the submissions and the people who appeared reflected the view that we are a well-operating Assembly. The majority saw the need for us to be given fewer restrictions and more ability to determine things like our own size … Based on a discussion of the evidence, I can see no reason why we should not have that power, which is similar to all other parliaments in Australia.
The ACT is not a colony of the commonwealth and it should not be subject to arbitrary government interference, just as our federal government is no longer treated as a colony of Britain and can have confidence that its laws and decisions will not face arbitrary interference from its colonial power. Yet today, sitting there in the self-government act, random and out of place, is this politically motivated restriction that says that the ACT cannot make euthanasia laws. It is time for that to be removed. A step in that process is this Assembly formally raising it with our federal counterparts and telling them that we and the people of the ACT deserve to have that right reinstated.
I do not question the legal authority of the commonwealth government to make a law like this. They can do so using the territories power in the constitution. What I am saying is that it is inappropriate, discriminatory and undemocratic to interfere and retract this law-making power after self-government was granted.
One could compare our situation to the relationship between the federal parliament and Britain. Section 59 of the Australian Constitution, for example, still allows the Queen to “disallow any law within one year from the Governor-General’s assent”. It is convention that prevents the use of this power and this provides certainty and stability to the government, and respects the democratic right of the Australian people. Imagine if the Queen were to use this power and suddenly disallow a law that our democratic and autonomous Australian parliament made.
Having granted independence to Australia, the very strong convention is of course that Britain will not interfere with the Australian parliament and its law making. In the same vein, the commonwealth granted self-government to the territories. It should not now derogate from that grant by revoking or interfering with the legislative power of the territory. This is a view that is fundamental to our Westminster system of government.
Let me emphasise one further fact to the Assembly: euthanasia and the ability of our local parliament to legislate on this issue are very important issues to the people of Canberra. I am sure that all members actually know this fact. No matter what some members in here may say, people in Canberra do not care only about having potholes fixed or grass mowed. To pretend that they do not care about a wider range of issues is to do them a real disservice. We are a Legislative Assembly with responsibility for a range of issues—local ones as well as what we could refer to as state issues. This is not just a local government.
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