Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

I tend to agree with the member for Fisher; I thought that was well summed up. I won't be supporting this at all. I've got the Restoring Territory Rights Bill 2022 here in front of me. It's probably the shortest bill that I've ever seen in my nine years in this place. The first two pages are pretty well blank. Then it says:

A Bill for an Act to amend the law in relation to the legislative powers of territories, and for related purposes.

…   …   …

This Act is the Restoring Territory Rights Act 2022.

Then at the back, where it says 'Application', it says:

(1) Despite the amendments made by this Schedule, the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995 of the Northern Territory—

it goes straight to the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act—

  (a) continues to have effect as a law of the Territory in relation to any act or thing that was done before 27 March 1997; but

  (b) has no force or effect as a law of the Territory in relation to any act or thing done on or after that day.

(2) Subitem (1) applies subject to a contrary intention in a law of the Northern Territory that is enacted after the commencement of this item.

So that's about it; that's the whole bill.

This bill, contrary to what the member for Solomon was saying earlier, is really about euthanasia and allowing the territories to legalise it. If this bill were a referendum bill to change territories—the ACT and the Northern Territory—to states, then I might support that. But the reality is that the territories are not the same as the states, and the Constitution sets it up that way. It's very clear. All the states have 12 senators in the other place. Tasmania, with 400,000 or 500,000 people, almost the same population as Canberra, have 12 senators. And the ACT get two senators because they're not a state; they're a territory. It's the same with the Northern Territory. They get two senators as well. If you want to become a state, then become a state, but this is really about legalising euthanasia through the back door and parliamentarians in this place trying to override what was done or the current parliament not debating it and putting that in place.

I wasn't really going to speak on this—I wasn't going to support it—but I received a letter from Christopher Prowse, who is the Catholic Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn.

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