Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Restoring Territory Rights Bill 2022 is probably one of the more difficult bills that many of us will have to face. I have been given many notes from both sides of the debate on this. They are all well-meaning and all make very valid points. The AMA has reservations about euthanasia, faith leaders have got their reservations, as have many of my constituents. However, that's also balanced by quite a few people who have absolutely no question in their minds about the rights of people to choose to go down that path. Having personally witnessed four to five people slowly dwindle away to diseases such as cancer, I must admit that it's a real conundrum for me as well. In fact, before we came to the first week of parliament, last Sunday I visited a party member who was passing, and he subsequently passed away on the Tuesday. I was able to witness firsthand very recently how awful it is when someone is taken in that slow manner.

But this bill is not about whether euthanasia is right or wrong; it's about restoring the rights to territories to make decisions on this. My only concern there—well, I have a couple of concerns, but one of them is that I just don't believe the territories have the levers and the systems; they're not set up. In other words, they don't have a Senate to debate this properly and handle issues like this. We have those powers federally, and I think that the federal government needs to deal with it here, in this House, and not pass it on to the territories. I suspect, and I hope that I'm not right, that they are passing it over so that they don't have to really confront this tough issue. I hope they're doing it for the right reasons, but I don't know what their motives are. We can deal with it here.

I'm also against it because I am one of those people who would like to see the powers of the states and the territories reduced. I think one thing that the pandemic showed us for sure was that Australians have had a gutful of living in what they called eight countries, with closed borders and different rules in every state when it came to who could go to work, who couldn't go to work, who they could see or who they couldn't see. We had people from Queensland trying to go to work in New South Wales and come back, but they couldn't because they had to quarantine. Yet on their passports they had one common thing, which is that they are all Australian citizens. I might reside in Queensland, but I am an Australian citizen. As such, I and many other Queenslanders and Australians believe we should be able to move within our country and our borders as we see fit. They wanted the federal government to lead when it came to mandates on the pandemic, and we were actually constrained by the Constitution. So I am against anything that gives states and territories more powers.

We need to have a good conversation about the Constitution in this country, and we need to change a few things so that the federal government can take its rightful place and lead when it comes to matters of national crisis and matters of conscience such as euthanasia and other matters, and not hand it to the states. We are supposed to be the highest level of government in this country, and the Constitution prevents us from fulfilling that obligation to the people of this country. So I say: don't support giving the rights back to the territories. Deal with it here federally. Let's ante up. Let's behave like we are supposed to and deal with the big issues and not pass it off to the smaller and lower forms of government.

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