Linda White (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will measure my comments. Nevertheless, the politics aside, I want to set out why I think the bill is a bad idea. It's a matter of principle that this parliament and this Senate do not interfere in the self-government of the ACT and the Northern Territory or undermine the independence of those legislatures. The ACT was granted self-government in 1988. It is my view that from that point on it became inappropriate for the Commonwealth to cherry-pick issues that the elected parliament in the ACT could legislate on. Once the power to make its own decisions was handed out and the people of the ACT got responsibility and elected a government to represent them, the Commonwealth, out of principle, should no longer restrict it.

We saw the same principle applied last year with the debate on Restoring Territory Rights Bill. The parliament agreed, with the support of many coalition members and senators, that restricting the power of territory legislatures to make decisions about themselves for themselves was wrong. The debate found that restricting the rights of the territories to actually govern themselves through the prism of single issues was not right. Yet, with this bill, we are making the same mistake again by seeking to overturn the recently expressed will of this Senate that using a hot-button issue to justify interfering in the self-government and democratic processes of an entire Australian jurisdiction is just not right. The position taken with this bill is unprincipled, and I feel it is disingenuous.

The fact is that the ACT has an elected government and a well-equipped parliament, and interfering with it would be legally strange. The view was echoed by the ACT solicitor-general in his submission to the inquiry to the bill:

It would be unprecedented for one legislature to seek to direct the executive of another government to undertake an executive action … which really flies in the face of basic principles of our system of government. One jurisdiction should not be in a position to dictate what another self-governing jurisdiction does in such a fashion.

From those comments, it's clear that whichever organisation runs the Calvary hospital is a matter for the ACT people, enacted through a majority of elected members of the ACT parliament which makes up their executive. Reviewing that decision through an inquiry is not a matter for the Commonwealth government or the Senate. It was an executive decision for the ACT. Australians, acting through their local parliaments, deserve the same equal rights to legal self-determination and should not be stood over by this chamber or the Commonwealth government. This sentiment was well expressed in the ACT government's submission to the inquiry when it outlined:

… the majority of elected members of the ACT Legislative Assembly have so far concluded that they do not want and did not seek to create—

an inquiry into the decision—

The Self-Government Amendment Bill ignores existing mechanisms for deliberation, accountability, transparency and debate that have operated as intended. It instead attempts to interfere in the ACT's self-government and to impose a poorly defined requirement that undermines the Assembly's decisions on when and how to consider, scrutinise and pass legislation and is, on its terms, inconsistent with the principles of responsible government.

To me, that summary says it all. We should keep out of decisions which do not concern us.

Putting this matter of principle to one side, the second reason I wanted to speak on this debate today was to unpack what I see it as the merits of the ACT decision over Calvary hospital. From my point of view, the move to publicly insource the hospital sounds like a good idea. If you're going to spend millions of dollars over decades to publicly fund an entire hospital and its redevelopment, it makes sense that the territory government would also like to own it. The decision of the ACT government, contrary to a lot of letters I've received about this issue, was not a takeover. The former Calvary public hospital was a public hospital, publicly funded by the ACT government. All the buildings at the site were paid for by either the ACT government or the Commonwealth government.

As Calvary public hospital was funded by the government in order to provide a service, it was well within the power of the ACT government to terminate its contract of service with the contractors who formerly ran Calvary. What's more, it's not as though the decision came out of the blue. There's been significant consultation over this decision for some time. In fact, there have been two stages of public consultation over the proposal to in-house North Canberra Hospital, and a two-year negotiation process which, by all accounts, did not happen in good faith from the side of the hospital administrators. Throughout the negotiation process, the ACT government made it clear that, as a last result, it would consider legislating to acquire the land if necessary, and after two years of Calvary not coming to the party, it made a decision that the long-term best interests of Canberra were served by publicly owning and operating a hospital which was collectively funded by the people of the ACT. The transition of the hospital staff and administration of the ACT government occurred on 4 July this year. Given this extensive consultation and negotiation process and the fact that the transition has already happened, the substance of this bill is actually redundant. Forcing the ACT government to hold an inquiry into a decision that was two years in the making and has already happened, in my view, is ridiculous. I think Senator Canavan knows this and he is properly just as surprised as anyone that he even got an inquiry into this legislation in the first place. Sadly, though, as I mentioned earlier, I think this has been an attempt to whip up fear about religious freedom.