Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This private member's bill, the Restoring Territory Rights Bill 2022, removes the limitations imposed by the Euthanasia Laws Act 1997 on the right of the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory to consider laws that they might pass in their capacity relating to voluntary assisted dying. All states have passed laws allowing voluntary assisted dying. This private member's bill restores to the ACT and the Northern Territory the power to consider laws in relation to the same.

The bill before the chamber today is not about passing a law to impose voluntary assisted dying, also known as euthanasia. If this chamber and the Senate vote for this bill it will not permit people to make decisions to end their lives surrounded by family and friends when suffering terminal illness and the consequent pain experienced. Like so many in this place, I have witnessed the grievous and longstanding suffering of family and friends when pain is awful and unbearable and all personal dignity has been lost. These things are deeply personal, ethically challenging and even spirituality confronting. I have genuine concerns about the prospect of elder abuse and the legal protections necessary to avoid that. These are decisions that have to be made by my colleagues at the state level.

We need to do better in this country on palliative care. As long ago as September 2014 the Grattan Institute report Dying well pointed out that 70 per cent of Australians want to die at home but only 14 per cent do so. Dying in Australia is more institutionalised than in any comparable country that we think about, such as New Zealand, the United States, France and Ireland. In Ipswich, my home city, we have good palliative care delivered by charitable institutions in people's homes, the palliative care unit at Ipswich general hospital and the locally beloved institution known as Ipswich Hospice, but we need to do better in this country. We need to do much more when it comes to palliative care.

I do not think this bill rules out doing better in palliative care. It would not be our role basically to decide these things on euthanasia or voluntary assisted dying if we passed this bill. This is an act of parliament that seeks to undo something which happened to 25 years ago. It seeks to undo the imposing of a Commonwealth prohibition on the territories. It seems very odd to me that the parliament did this. Our federation is not fossilised; it's living, it's evolving, it's changing all the time. It's changed by referenda, by High Court decisions and by cooperative federalism, historically known as the COAG process and often called the national cabinet these days.

This is not to suggest there are not problems with voluntary assisted dying legislation in states and territories. If we were to look at our Constitution when it was first conceived and at people like Barton, Parkes, Deakin and others who were involved in it—at the time they were all blokes by the way; conservative, liberal blokes—we would assume that Western Australia may not join the federation and that New Zealand would be state of Australia. But we know what happened in the end: WA was in as a state and New Zealand is a separate nation to us.

Those opposite have long championed states' rights, but to listen to some of their speeches in this place, they support states when convenient but territories scarcely at all. Some of those opposite seem to want to maintain and even expand Commonwealth power. Robert Menzies must be turning in his grave. I say to those opposite: what rights for territorians? What do you wish to prescribe or proscribe? What responsibilities do you wish to strip from the territories now or in the future?

In this country now, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania have the power and the jurisdiction to make laws in relation to assisted dying. In other words, it's a state responsibility. But for Australians living in the ACT or the Northern Territory it's the responsibility of the federal government. This makes no sense at all to me, either in geography or democracy. Section 122 of the Constitution is being invoked by those opposed to this bill, but the federal government does have the power to pass laws in relation to the ACT and the Northern Territory. That is a strange thing to do with our federation.

I don't accept the arguments on political maturity, and nor can the absence of an upper house be reason not to return these rights to territorians. My home state of Queensland has not had an upper house for a hundred years, yet members of the Queensland parliament could make these decisions upon mature reflection and debate. Frankly, I don't think the fact that the Commonwealth parliament has a Senate is the best argument against this bill. In any event, for the many, many decades after the upper house was brought into the colonies and into the states, the presence of the landed gentry and business establishment infested the upper houses of the states. They were often elected without a democratic franchise and often without one vote, one value. So don't give me this nonsense about the absence of an upper house in the states and territories.

For some, this bill is about euthanasia, to which they have a religious, spiritual or philosophical objection. I do not have such objections, but I do have serious concerns about euthanasia and about the protection of the weak, the vulnerable and the suffering, and how this can be done with full autonomy and cognitive capacity. But this is a matter for those politicians who do or should have the right to make laws in respect of those things. In my faith tradition there are plenty of people who allege belief in absolutes on certain issues, as if there's a litmus test on the veracity and fidelity of faith. Life is sacred, they have said—and I have heard this argued in this place—forgetting the genocide, homicide, infanticide and regicide we see in parts of the Old Testament. Just look at Genesis or Joshua or Judges.

I'm more of a New Testament Christian myself. It's possible to believe in the fundamentals of faith without being fundamentalist. I've read the Bible almost every day since I became a Christian at the age of 16 in the back pew of my Baptist church. I do not think this is a matter of spiritual absolutism. The god I believe in is a god of love who wants us to love one another and who tells us, in the words of Saint Paul of Tarsus to live the nine visible attributes of a Christian life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Those virtues could do with a bit more adherence into this place.

With respect, I don't see this as a debate about the sanctity of human life or similar issues. I see this debate for what it is in the pages of this bill. It's about whether people in Darwin or Canberra should have the same right to self-government and self-determination and legislative decision-making as people in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and even in my home city of Ipswich. These Australians, these territorians, should be able to decide this issue for themselves and not be subject to the dictates of people who don't live there—like me, or most of us in this place.

In summary, I'm voting for this bill. It's a tough decision for people of faith, I know. It's a conscience vote. I'm voting for territory rights, so that all Australians, no matter where they live, can decide this issue for themselves. They'll have their debates in their chambers, it will be passionate and well thought through and people will no doubt give good arguments one way or the other. But it will be in their legislative assemblies—where it should be—not in this place. I'm a Queenslander. The Queensland parliament has passed laws on this issue. The people of the ACT and the Northern Territory should do so or not do so. It should be their decision. They should decide this for themselves, and for that reason I'm supporting this bill.

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