Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This has been a fiery debate, and for no reason at all. We have to put everything in perspective about the debate we have before the chamber at the moment. First of all, this is the Australian parliament. More people vote for this parliament than for any other in this country. Let us put in perspective what we are talking about with the ACT—and we should bring the Northern Territory in on this too. The Northern Territory has a parliament of some 25 members, each representing between 4,000 and 5,000 electors. It has a population of around 205,000 people. The ACT has a little more in population—about 325,000 people. It has an assembly of 17 members.

Let us put this perspective. Which parliament has the greater national interest at heart? I think on every occasion it would be seen to be this parliament. Yet, sparingly, and with judgement and with the national interest in mind, we have acted on only two occasions that I recall since we have been in government for some 10 years. The first one was, of course, in relation to the Euthanasia Laws Bill, as far back as 1996, where we overturned the Northern Territory Rights of the Terminally Ill Act. Recently, of course, it was in relation to the Australian Capital Territory’s Civil Unions Act.

On the issue of the Northern Territory euthanasia bill, I would like to read what I said in my address—given the time, I will be ever so brief—about why I considered we should have overruled that act and why it was in the national interest. I said:

The insidious Northern Territory Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, which is the first in the world, operates on new tenets for our society—tenets of hopelessness and neglect as distinct from hope and care. There is something very chilling about a health system that normalises the act of suicide for those aged 18 years and over. That is what our society will be doing if it accepts the Northern Territory euthanasia act because, once we normalise the state of hopelessness, we will accept the broader concept of suicide. After all, suicide is only ever chosen when the state of utter hopelessness is reached.

I would have thought that everyone in this chamber would have thought the debate on euthanasia was of national interest and that the Northern Territory had not legislated just for their boundaries; it would be an act which was influential morally and socially throughout Australia. We ought to have intervened, and we did.

Equally, on the Australian Capital Territory’s civil unions legislation, I would like to quickly quote Senator Minchin, who sits here in front of me, but I am not going to have time. But I would recommend to anyone that they read his speech in regard to the reasons we sought, on these rare occasions, to overturn the ACT legislation—after much consultation, I should add. I urge the Senate to utterly reject this bill. (Time expired)