Patrick Dodson (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

DODSON () (): Four years ago, in August 2018, I stood in this place and spoke against a private senator's bill, the Restoring Territory Rights (Assisted Suicide Legislation Bill) 2015. That legislation failed, and not just because I voted against it. Now we have the Restoring Territory Rights Bill 2022 to consider. This bill will remove constraints on the legislative powers of the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory—constraints that were enacted in 1997 in order that the Commonwealth overturn Northern Territory legislation which was the first in the world to legislate euthanasia.

Four years ago—that is, more than two decades after the NT legislation was cancelled—euthanasia was legislated elsewhere across Australia. The Victorian parliament passed voluntary assisted dying legislation in November 2017, but it would not come into effect until June 2019. My home state of Western Australia was next. Legislation was enacted in December 2019, and I protested about that. Today every state in Australia has voluntary assisted dying legislation, although in some places the laws are yet to come into effect, so the landscape now is markedly different from that of four years ago. Euthanasia will soon be able to be practised in all parts of Australia—apart from the ACT and the Northern Territory.

The Northern Territory legislation, back in the mid-nineties, was called the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act—ROTI was the acronym—and four people took advantage of it before the Commonwealth intervened. I recognise that the legislation before us now, the Restoring Territory Rights Bill 2022, does not automatically revive the Northern Territory ROTI Act, but, as the explanatory memorandum spells out, it will ensure that the ACT and the Northern Territory parliaments will be able to allow their citizens the same rights as people living in the six states now hold. If the two territories want to follow suit, they will have the benefit of lessons from the legislation that the states have already worked upon.

Personally, I still hold the same reservations that I held four years ago about laws which license euthanasia or assisted dying, especially as they may affect First Nations peoples. But in the end I see euthanasia legislation as whitefella law, to be used by the non-Indigenous population. It's worth recording the research that was quoted previously by Senator Scarr. The research was into Aboriginal views on euthanasia, which was commissioned by the Northern Territory government when its ROTI Act was passed. The research team conducted 21 meetings across the Territory, involving 900 Aboriginal people from around 100 communities. They found that at least 90 per cent of those Aboriginal people opposed the legislation, as distinct from the 70 per cent support nationally for euthanasia. Palliative care was universally supported by Aboriginal people as the way people were traditionally cared for under their law, and that's still our way. We nurse our elderly into their death in our own communities, sometimes at great personal sacrifice. And remember this: in remote communities, as has already been alluded to, there aren't the palliative care services available that are supported elsewhere.

As I said in this place four years ago, any proposal by the Northern Territory to reintroduce assisted suicide legislation must occur in consultation with First Nations health services and communities because First Nations peoples are at a higher risk of being in a situation where assisted dying might take place. I said that four years ago.

I have pondered deeply how to approach the legislation before us now and, in spite of my fundamental spiritual opposition to euthanasia, I have never held to the slippery slope argument. I accept that adequate safeguards have been written into the laws that now prevail in the six states. They may not be adequate, but they're better than what was proposed. For that reason, and in recognition of the widespread non-Indigenous support for voluntary euthanasia, I intend this time to abstain from voting. I would not want to be the one person whose no vote sank this legislation.

I want to talk about other factors that have come in to weigh upon my deliberation. Many of you here would have been lobbied by faith based organisations to oppose this legislation. Some of those lobbyists have invoked my advocacy—in particular, about the anathema of euthanasia in First Nations people—to support their cause. The Australian Christian Lobby, for example, has campaigned against this legislation under the headline 'Protect Indigenous lives'. Yet this very same organisation, which purports to be concerned about First Nations peoples, has been peddling offensive propaganda which scoffs at the Aboriginal spiritual beliefs and belittles arguments for a First Nations Voice to this parliament.

Mr Martyn Iles, the managing director of the Australian Christian lobby, harangues his followers with video clips called 'The truth of it'. In an 18-minute rant back in June he railed against the Uluru Statement from the Heart as a 'pagan document', which he screwed up and tossed at the camera. A Voice to parliament, Iles asserts, is 'the agenda of critical race theorists' who want to divide people on the basis of their skin colour and to implant, in his words, 'some kind of trouble, some kind of cancer' into an otherwise good system. Iles compounded his offense in another video only a couple of weeks ago when he said he eschews the welcome to country because it 'affirms paganism and entangles one in false spirituality'.

I've been distressed by these scornful, hateful diatribes from so-called Christians, who are prepared to recruit First Nations peoples to support a campaign against euthanasia yet won't allow them a seat at the table. Those sorts of diatribes are injurious to respectful discussion. They have no place in our national discourse as we progress towards a referendum to entrench a Voice in the Constitution. Those opponents of the Voice to the parliament say that it will be divisive. Those same opponents fail to recognise that their argument is in itself divisive. I say that rather than dividing us a Voice will be an instrument of healing and reconciliation, a first step in the journey to resettle our relationship.