Tim Storer (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak in the chamber and indicate my support for Senator Leyonhjelm's private member's bill, Restoring Territory Rights (Assisted Suicide Legislation) Bill 2015. I support the ability of the territories to control their own legislative agenda. Their elected representatives should be fully answerable to their voters for the decisions they take. I would be disappointed if the Turnbull government did not allow this bill, should it be carried in the Senate, to be debated in the House of Representatives. I see here a fundamental question that the Senate is being asked to address: the ability of the Commonwealth to override the legislative will of the ACT and the Northern Territory on the specific question of assisted dying. This bill, if passed, would give the territories the same legislative rights as the states, specifically on assisted dying, overturning a 20-year-old federal law which prevented the territories from legalising assisted dying. This bill, simply put, provides the territories with the opportunity to introduce and debate assisted dying legislation, should they wish to do so. It is important to note that it does not enable the Northern Territory to reinstate the original assisted dying legislation, which gave rise to the decision of the parliament of the Commonwealth to overturn that law. This is a matter of the democratic right of the territories and the people in them. It's a states' right matter, as passionately discussed by Senator Scullion earlier today. Voters in the ACT and the Northern Territory should have the same right as voters in South Australia and the other states to vote for or oppose politicians who pledge to legalise assisted dying.

Other senators here have discussed the question of assisted dying itself. I shall not do so. I simply want to deal with the legislation before me. Should I be asked to consider legislation on assisted dying itself, I would apply myself to considering, deeply, the details of what is being proposed and especially the safeguards contained in the measure. But that is not the case right now.

That said, I have noted the processes that have occurred in other jurisdictions when legislators have been asked to consider bills. The legislation passed by the Victorian parliament at the end of last year, for example, followed a 10-month crossbench parliamentary inquiry set up after that state's legislative council agreed on such an approach in 2015. The relevant committee tabled its final report a year later. The government released its response six months after that. A ministerial advisory panel was then established and its 66 recommendations, informed by the work of the parliamentary inquiry, were completed a further six months later, in the middle of last year. Those recommendations were the building blocks for the legislation itself, which came into law at the end of last year, but not before an exhaustive debate in both houses of the Victorian parliament. As we have heard, the legislation will not be in effect until June 2019. So the reports and the decisions taken in Victoria have taken more than two, nearly three, years. From the outside, this appears to have been a thoughtful and measured way of gathering all the evidence for and against before any parliament makes a decision on a matter of such importance. Therefore, discussion of palliative care and related public policies with regard to assisted dying is admirable but is not being considered here today. Similarly, the discussion of the Victorian legislation and the findings from other jurisdictions, based on their legislation, is also not being considered here today. Again, this is a matter of the democratic rights of the territories to have the same rights as voters in South Australia and other states to vote for or oppose politicians who pledge to legalise assisted dying. Therefore, I will be supporting the legislation before the Senate today, Restoring Territory Rights (Assisted Suicide Legislation) Bill 2015, on that basis.