Page 2923 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 September 2014
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The Legislative Assembly for the ACT has relatively few checks and balances on it and represents the smallest number of Australian citizens. The Assembly is small relative to other parliaments around Australia and legislation can be passed with a simple majority of nine members. There is no upper house, Governor or Administrator to apply an additional level of scrutiny on bills. There is limited committee scrutiny of bills especially relative to other Commonwealth jurisdictions. Past and current experience of the Legislative Assembly is that there is often a very short period between introduction and passage of a bill.
I made the following point:
The matters prescribed in section 23(1A) and 23(1B) are issues that would have significant consequences for all Australians if the current legislative position was changed. It is not appropriate that they be considered by the ACT Legislative Assembly.
That is not just my view; that is the current view of the federal parliament. That is the current view of members across that parliament who have had a number of occasions to form a decision about that. Liberal, Labor and, I am sure, independent members of the federal parliament have consistently agreed with that view.
It is probably because, in a parliament where we have, in this case, eight members on one side from the Labor Party, eight from the other and essentially one Green having the balance of power, they do not think that one Green member in the ACT should be making the decision on an issue like this that has consequences for over 20 million other Australians and that it is appropriate that there are some checks and balances on the ACT.
With regard to this issue, although I do not think it should be occurring as a debate in the ACT for the reasons I have outlined, this is a conscience issue within the Liberal Party. I do want to make that very clear. I want to separate those two issues. It is similar to the same-sex marriage debate; there are different views within the Liberal Party on these issues.
Members interjecting—
MR HANSON: I hear interjections from the other side. There was a view from the High Court in that case that it was appropriate that the ACT not make marriage laws, and it is the view in this case from the federal parliament that the ACT not make euthanasia laws. So we are going through this merry dance again.
I make it very clear that should this motion be passed today—and it appears that it will—if it does lead to a letter being written to the federal parliament by the Chief Minister, and if the federal parliament were then to make the decision essentially to amend the self-government act to allow this place to debate euthanasia, and if a bill came before this place, Liberal members of this place would have a conscience vote on that issue. I do not think that will come to pass, based on the precedent of the federal parliament, but if that should come to pass, that would be the case.
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