2021-11-12
At today’s Meeting of Attorneys-General, ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury and Northern Territory Attorney-General the Honourable Selena Uibo will seek support from State Attorneys-General to call on the Federal Government to support the rights of Territories and remove its legislative restrictions on the introduction of voluntary assisted dying within the Territory Self Government Acts as a priority.
The ACT and NT Governments continue to call for the restoration of democratic rights to Territorians by removing the Federal restrictions which prevent the Territories from legislating on the issue of voluntary assisted dying.
These restrictions have been in place since the Commonwealth Parliament passed the Euthanasia Laws Act 1997. This nullified the Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995 and prevented the NT and the ACT from passing legislation in relation to euthanasia or voluntary assisted dying.
In the interim period, the states of Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland have legislated for voluntary assisted dying, and a Bill has been introduced in the New South Wales Parliament.
The following can be attributed to ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury:
“It’s absolutely time these discriminatory restrictions were removed, and we ask the Attorneys-General of Australia to support us in this call. It is very simple: if citizens of the States are allowed access to voluntary assisted dying schemes, citizens of the Territories should also be allowed.
“Residents of the Territories are being treated as second-class citizens. The imposed restriction on our ability to legislate on voluntary assisted dying is inequitable and undemocratic. Voluntary assisted dying is a deeply important issue to people in the ACT, and we should be permitted to consider this issue within our own democratically elected parliaments.
“Australian States are progressively enacting their own voluntary assisted dying laws, bringing the ridiculous situation into sharp relief. While State residents can access voluntary assisted dying schemes, residents of Australian Territories remain trapped in a second-class society, prevented from accessing or enacting such schemes.
“We seek support from the Attorneys-General to recognise this unfair and undemocratic situation and support the modernising of these laws. We request a unified call to the Federal Parliament to remove the legislative restrictions on voluntary assisted dying placed on the Australian Territories.”
The following can be attributed to NT Attorney-General, the Honourable Selena Uibo:
“This proposal should not even be controversial. This is about Territorians having the right to decide important issues for themselves, just like the rest of Australia.
“The rest of the country isn’t better than us and they shouldn’t get to tell us what laws the Territories can and can’t pass.
“This Meeting of Attorney’s-General is an opportunity for every state and territory to speak with one voice and call on the Commonwealth Government to right this wrong.”