Page 4607 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 27 November 2019
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if the Labor Party are short of ideas for private members’ business, I am happy to take on a spot or two, if it would make life easier.
The only thing that is not a shame is that at least this time I have my voice. Last time this was debated, in August last year, I had a bad case of laryngitis and Mr Rattenbury delivered my speech.
After 30 years of self-government, there is no doubt that the Assembly has the trust of the people of the ACT to govern them effectively. It will always be the right time to lobby the commonwealth government to restore our territory rights and to allow us to have the freedom to debate and pass legislation that reflects the democratic will of the people in regard to voluntary assisted dying. It will always be the right time until it is done, and the Greens, for one, will not stop saying that.
The time is always right for the federal parliament to restore our rights in this space and to give the territory full voice and full opportunity to debate these matters, just as every other Australian parliament can, and just as other Australian citizens have the right to have their representatives discuss this issue on their behalf. These are totally discriminatory restrictions that place citizens of the ACT and the Northern Territory in a position that our fellow Australians are not in. On this specific issue, our parliaments are not allowed to determine the position of their constituents.
I appreciate that voluntary assisted dying, which is the issue that sits behind this, is a very difficult and personal topic. However, my views on this are also well known. I am a strong supporter of an appropriately legislated right to voluntary assisted dying. My views are formed by experience, stories that people have told me, opinions that have been expressed, and my own personal desire to have that opportunity, both for myself, if and when it becomes relevant, and for my family, when it was relevant in the past and if it becomes relevant in the future. But that is not the issue that we are debating today. The point is that we should have the right to have that debate, and that right has been denied to us.
If we were to have that debate, it would be a very complex one. I have also been clear in saying that publicly in the past. If the so-called Andrews bill was removed, I do not imagine that there would be a quick process in the ACT leading to passing any legislation that is relevant to this matter. We would have to think very carefully about how the public conversation was constructed and how it was held. That is an issue that has already been considered at length by the select committee, of which Ms Cheyne and I were members in the past.
In the future, if we were to go down the path of legislation, we would have to think even more carefully about how we constructed that legislation. Community views on this are diverse, and we have been talking about a very serious matter. But the bottom line is that we will not be having that discussion in any substantive way until such time as subsections 23(1A) and (1B) are removed from the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988, which is a commonwealth act. I am deeply disappointed that this has not yet occurred.
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