Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also want to make a contribution to this debate on the Restoring Territory Rights (Assisted Suicide Legislation) Bill 2015. I want to take a slightly different tack at the start of my contribution. I actually think that it's appalling that the Prime Minister of this country has traded away about five per cent of the nation's legislative time with respect to a vote on another piece of legislation. In order to get Senator Leyonhjelm's vote on the ABCC legislation, the Prime Minister dedicated precious legislative time in this chamber to advance Senator Leyonhjelm's electoral prospects. The reality is we have no jurisdiction in this issue anyway. We don't have any jurisdiction to legislate for assisted suicide, euthanasia or the like. For a deal—in my view, a very tawdry deal—to be done on such an emotive and important issue of territory rights and euthanasia is just another symptom of the dysfunction of this government.

I rely on my information coming from those good people in the Parliamentary Library. If I get a Bills Digest, I ask the Parliamentary Library about it and they always provide all of the information. In the Bills Digest on this bill, there is a description of this deal—a clear and concise description—alleged by Senator Leyonhjelm and there is, at the end of the information provided, disagreement about what the deal actually was. It's contained in the Parliamentary Library's Bills Digest on the Restoring Territory Rights (Assisted Suicide Legislation) Bill 2015. For the life of me, I cannot understand how we can take an issue like this and make it a tradeable commodity for a vote on another piece of legislation. I find that very disturbing.

I've listened to the debate and many of the speakers on this. For what it's worth, I used to live in the Northern Territory. I have family that live in the Northern Territory right now. I've consulted with those family members in the Northern Territory. I had a brother in Royal Adelaide Hospital, very recently, getting treatment. My daughter-in-law's brother-in-law died at 43 of leukaemia after a very critical cancer treatment. His treatment was, incidentally, delivered mainly in South Australia. I've been lobbied quite substantially on this issue. One of the most compelling people who I've spoken to is that good person Andrew Denton. Andrew Denton pointed me in the right direction on a number of these matters.

Over a period of time, I've sourced the original legislation from Oregon, which, I think, was the first jurisdiction to put this type of legislation in place, and I've had a look at the legislation in Victoria. I can say very clearly that, if you look at the evidence and the assessment of what happened in Oregon—under the legislation there I think there were some 1,969 prescription recipients, and 1,275 of those patients actually ingested the medication—you can get a very good view of how big an issue this is. I understand the population of Oregon is currently 4.1 million. You can actually dive into the 2017 annual report and you can see that there were 143 deaths during 2017, and most of the patients, 80.4 per cent, were aged 65 or older. The median age of death was 74 years. As in the previous years, recipients were commonly white, at 94.4 per cent, and well educated, with 48.9 per cent having baccalaureate degrees.

I hear all the contributions from various sectors of the chamber and I listen to my colleague Senator Dodson, who says there are grave reservations in the Indigenous community. It's probably not the most pressing issue in the Indigenous community; I think that's fair to say. But if people are not accessing health services because of the fear—whether it's mistaken or whether it's a misunderstanding—that there is an assisted dying process, that's absolutely catastrophic, in my view.

I can go on about this probably more than most of the people in this chamber. I saw my father die during an episode of chemotherapy. In those days, chemotherapy was catastrophic. You would get a dose of chemotherapy which was so caustic that it overcame most of your bodily functions, but you got six weeks. You got six weeks of respite. I think, after two periods of that chemotherapy, he was at least able to put his affairs in order. He was at least able to do the things he wanted to do. He never wanted to go a second earlier. He endured. Ultimately he died of a heart attack while I was actually physically there, during an episode of chemotherapy. But it's come a long way from there.

Palliative care has come a long way from there. Just last week a colleague of mine, who was 76 years old and a president of the TWU South Australia and Northern Territory branch, was doing something that was probably a little untoward at the age of 76: moving a fridge. He suffered an incident when he was transporting that fridge and collided with a pole. He was admitted to intensive care and put into a coma. As always, our very, very good intensive care people did their absolute best to maintain life and the rest of his functions, but ultimately he was taken out of the coma and was found to have no cognitive functions. He basically had been deprived of oxygen; it was unclear how long he'd been in the car before the retrieval teams got there and took him to the appropriate facility. So the decision was made then that they would not continue with restoring his bodily functions or getting him to breathe unaided and, after a reasonably short period of time, he passed away.

I go from one end of the scale to the other end of the scale and, in the middle, I could stand here and reiterate many cases of friends and family—close family, including both my mothers-in-law and my first wife—who all went through cancer treatments and palliative care and passed in the company of their children, grandchildren, friends and relatives. I'm not certain that there are a great number of people who are rushing to take a solution here. The evidence, if we look at Oregon, is 4.1 million people and about 143 per annum in that 20-year zone. It's very clear. People like Andrew Denton and other very competent people in this space say: 'You need to recognise, Alex, that five per cent of people will not get the benefit of palliative care. Five per cent of people will suffer inordinately from their condition, and they should have the right to choose.' That's the prevailing argument. They also say that 40 per cent of that five per cent will not take it, but they should have the right to it.

I have been entirely conflicted by this debate. The argument in respect of people in the Northern Territory having the same rights as every other Australian is probably where I started out. I thought that looked like a no-brainer. What's the difference between an Australian in the Northern Territory and an Australian in South Australia? But when you dive back into it, there probably is a little bit of a debate. If you go back to the Northern Territory referendum on statehood, 94,000 people voted. That's probably smaller than a federal electorate. Of those, 44,702 voted yes, 48,241 voted no and there were 1,065 informals. There was an attempt to set up a bipartisan NT Legislative Assembly committee, chaired by former Chief Minister Steve Hatton. That committee proposed a draft constitution and said that it should be debated at an elected constitutional convention. The Hon. Shane Stone ignored that recommendation, nominating a convention membership of 53 members at short notice, and presented the convention's draft constitution, which was different from the committee's recommendations. The former CLP Chief Minister Steve Hatton later said that one of the campaign slogans at the time was 'We want statehood, not Stonehood.' So it was very clear that there was a very divisive character leading the Northern Territory at that time. It beggars belief that the Northern Territory would vote against statehood, but they did, and clearly because they had reservations about the way the place was being run.

The starting point of my statement is: if you can trade off five per cent of the nation's legislative time for a vote on another bill, what certainty will we ever have that there won't be another deal in the future which will change the parameters of whichever state or territory comes out and puts into place some assisted suicide legislation? I'm not certain that this is as clear-cut as people are making out. I've lived in the Northern Territory, and the saying in the Northern Territory is: if you're in pain, get on a plane. You're generally going to get better advice from specialists and/or medical treatment if you go to Adelaide or Melbourne or wherever. That's no criticism of the Northern Territory. It's a very small population base. Obviously, they can't have all of the attendant specialist services and expertise that a major population centre will have. They do great work. You can see that in the work they did with respect to East Timor and the like. But if you do get crook in the Northern Territory, a lot of people choose to get their treatment in another state.

I'm not sure, if we do not support this right to go and discuss assisted dying, assisted suicide or the like, that we're going to be doing anyone in the Northern Territory a great disservice. I'm not sure that anybody in the Northern Territory is really going to be tremendously upset. They may have an in-principle objection, but they voted against statehood because they didn't like the way their leader was taking them to it. That's essentially what the evidence says. They've been used very unfairly in this issue, in my view.

I asked initially: 'Why is this a conscience vote? Why hasn't our leadership done what they do on most issues?' The answer that came back was: it's a conscience vote because in 1998 it was a conscience vote. Okay, I'll accept that. I've sought some advice from the Northern Territory, and some of the advice coming back was: 'Shouldn't this be done at a higher level? Why should a small jurisdiction like the Northern Territory have to go through and do this?'

One of the things I do disagree with Senator Leyonhjelm on is this position about competitive federalism. What does that mean? I can point to a couple of examples of what it means. It means that if you are a jurisdiction that is in favour of online gambling—and I'm not opposed to that—then you seek to base yourself in the Northern Territory, and that's essentially what's happened. I have no particular view on pornography or the rest of it, but when in recent times you want to go into that business, the place do you it is the ACT. That's what the history was.

I'm opposed to this notion of taking the smallest group of constituents, getting a position up and then trying to expand that around the country. Basically, I think my bottom line position is that I'm not convinced that, although a good death is desired by all, we can prescribe that adequately and in perpetuity. It will change. We've got an example here where a Prime Minister traded a position for a vote. So ultimately I'm going to come down on the basis that I'm totally unsure about the effect of what we're doing here on the Northern Territory and, on balance, I don't think we're going to strenuously disadvantage anybody in the ACT or the Northern Territory with regard to not passing Senator Leyonhjelm's bill.

I will sum up by saying I don't like the way it came to this chamber. I don't like the fact this nation's legislative time has been used as a bargaining chip. I'm unsure whether we can carefully and appropriately prescribe in perpetuity for end of life choice. My own lived experience of quite a number of people extremely close to me is that they all went the way they wanted to go, fighting for every last breath in their body and, really, surrounded by the people they loved. And I don't know if we should be doing too much more than that. Thank you.