There are currently two Bills
before the Senate – virtually identical in their terms – that would seek to
undo the wise work done by the Commonwealth Parliament in passing the Euthanasia Laws Act 1997.
This Act clarified that the
Legislative Assemblies of the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern
Territory have no power to make “laws
permitting or having the effect of permitting (whether subject to conditions or
not) the form of intentional killing of another called euthanasia (which
includes mercy killing) or the assisting of a person to terminate his or her
life.”
The Restoring Territory Rights (Assisted
Suicide Legislation) Bill 2015 was introduced on 2 December 2015 by Liberal Democratic Party
Senator David Leyonhjelm.
The Restoring Territory
Rights (Dying with Dignity) Bill 2016 was introduced on 1 March 2016 by
Australian Greens Senator Richard Di Natale and Australian Labor Party Senator
Katy Gallagher.
Each of the Bills would remove
from the Australian Capital Territory
(Self-Government) Act 1988 and the Northern Territory
(Self-Government) Act 1978 the explicit restriction on the two Territories’ Legislative Assemblies
from passing laws that permit a “form of
intentional killing”.
Proponents of the Bill are running the primary argument that
laws that permit the intentional
killing of some people under some circumstances are good because (a) some
people are better off dead and/or (b) people have a right to ask to be killed
at a time of their choosing.
However, they are also arguing
that regardless
of whether or not you support euthanasia you should support the right of the
Territories’ Legislative Assemblies to make laws permitting “that form of
intentional killing of another called euthanasia”.
Now this argument is a patent
nonsense. It is illogical.
There is an exact parallel
with the slavery issue in the mid-nineteenth century in the United States of
America.
In the Sixth Joint Debate
between Abraham Lincoln and Judge Stephen Douglas during the campaign to
represent Illinois in the Senate held at Quincy on 13 October 1858, Lincoln
exposed the illogicality of Judge Douglas’s attempt to claim that he could say
slavery was an evil but that Territories should have the right to have slavery
if they wanted too:
So I say again, that in regard to the arguments that are
made, when Judge Douglas says he “don’t care whether slavery is voted up or
voted down,” whether he means that as an individual expression of sentiment, or
only as a sort of statement of his views on national policy, it is alike true
to say that he can thus argue logically if he don’t see anything wrong in it;
but he cannot say so logically if he admits that slavery is wrong. He cannot
say that he would as soon see a wrong voted up as voted down.
When Judge
Douglas says that whoever or whatever community wants slaves, they have a right
to have them, he is perfectly logical, if there is nothing wrong in the
institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that
anybody has a right to do wrong.
When he says that slave property and horse and
hog property are alike to be allowed to go into the Territories, upon the
principles of equality, he is reasoning truly, if there is no difference
between them as property; but if the one is property held rightfully, and the
other is wrong, then there is no equality between the right and wrong; so that,
turn it in any way you can, in all the arguments sustaining the Democratic
policy, and in that policy itself, there is a careful, studied exclusion of the
idea that there is anything wrong in slavery.
During debate on the Voluntary
Euthanasia Bill 2010 in the Western Australian Legislative Council on 22 September
2010 the Hon Helen Bullock MLC (Labor) said:
The Voluntary Euthanasia Bill raises the question of whether our
election to Parliament gives us the right to sanction the killing of other
human beings in circumstances other than self-defence or the defence of the
nation. This is not a difficult question. The answer is simple. No. We do not have
such a right. We do not have the right to sanction the killing of our fellow
human beings.
No Parliament – including the Legislative Assemblies of the
Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory – has the right to
sanction the intentional killing of human beings outside the context of self-defence
or defence of the nation. Following Lincoln’s observation that we “cannot
logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong”. The Commonwealth Parliament was right
in 1997 to clarify that the Territories’ Legislative Assemblies had no right to
pass a law permitting a form of intentional killing. It would be wrong in 2016
to pass a law which would have, and is intended to have, the effect of
purporting to give the Territories’ Legislative Assemblies the power to do the
specific wrong of making a law permitting a form of intentional killing.
The Restoring Territory Rights (Assisted
Suicide Legislation) Bill 2015 and the Restoring
Territory Rights (Dying with Dignity) Bill 2016 should be permitted to die
a natural death when Parliament is prorogued for the next election and should
not be revived.
