Page 2922 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 September 2014
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Voluntary euthanasia is a fundamental human right and that individuals should have the freedom to make self-governing choices;
Individuals have a right to choose to die with dignity …
Voluntary euthanasia is important …
What has happened is that the Greens have tried to get euthanasia into other jurisdictions. The last time that was attempted was last year in the New South Wales parliament, and it was voted down. As I understand it, the Greens tried to put in euthanasia as a federal law too, and get essentially a constitutional change. That was something they discussed at the last federal election.
The Greens now see an opportunity essentially to have the ACT as their gateway to get this in, because this has not been accepted in New South Wales and it has not been accepted by any other jurisdiction. I think it is naive of us to think that we in the ACT should have separate laws to New South Wales, which has so recently rejected a piece of law like this. We are a small island within the state of New South Wales, and it does not take much imagination to understand the consequences of us having a law like euthanasia enacted in the ACT when it is illegal in New South Wales and in every other jurisdiction, and having regard to what that will mean in terms of social implications, not just broadly across Australia but also within the ACT, in that it would essentially become the death capital of Australia.
We know that we cannot legislate in the ACT; this has been made pretty clear. Although it was a private member’s bill that introduced this restriction, in response to the Northern Territory legislation, let us be very clear that it was not just one person that enacted this. This was an act of the federal parliament. It was passed both in the lower house and in the Senate. So although there was some sort of derisory sneer and comment made against Kevin Andrews, this was voted on in the federal parliament, and many of those members, I am sure, who voted to support that bill came from the ALP. So this is not about one member; this is about the view of our federal parliament.
It has been attempted on a number of occasions since to change those laws. Bob Brown introduced a bill in 2008 and he reintroduced essentially the same bill in late 2010. So this is not a new debate. This has been going on for a significant period. Most recently it arose out of the review that was conducted here by the admin and procedure committee into the self-government act. That occurred at the end of the last Assembly.
As Mr Rattenbury mentioned, both he and I were on that committee. Although we agreed on a number of issues, this was one on which we disagreed. I do not think he read out my full dissenting comments, and I will refer to them here in relation to this aspect of the legislation. If you go to the report, Madam Assistant Speaker, you will find at appendix B additional comments from me, and I will quote from them. Recommendation 5, which related to the repeal of sections 23(1A) and 23(1B), stated:
It is appropriate that some restrictions be placed on the ability of the ACT Assembly to pass legislation that would have significant consequences for all Australians.
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