The ACT Liberal Party’s organisational wing has over-reacted to the Andrews Bill on euthanasia. It is to put a motion to the federal council of the party in Hobart next month saying that the independence of the ACT “”is best guaranteed through statehood”, and that statehood should be discussed at the constitutional convention and put in place by 2000. Fortunately, the ACT parliamentary party has disowned the idea.
A separate resolution affirms the right of the parliaments of the states and territories to make laws for their citizens and for the federal parliament to respect those laws. That resolution makes more sense, but it is still flawed in the case of the ACT and still cast too widely.
The trouble with the resolutions is that if, or more like when, they are defeated, it will be seen as a defeat for self-determination for the people of the territories.
The Andrews Bill is an inappropriate infringement of the rights of people in the territories. It singles out one head of power and takes it away from the territory legislatures. Where will it end? Anything the territory legislatures to that offends the morality of a federal MP will be subject to federal veto. But statehood for the ACT is not the answer.
The answer lies in the Northern Territory and the ACT persuading the Commonwealth through the Council of Australian Governments to accept the general principle that the Commonwealth will not legislate to frustrate the territory legislatures dealing with state-type matters. It would mean that if the Commonwealth wanted to act in any area it would have to use powers other than the territories power and that the laws would have to have general application throughout Australia, so it would not allow the territories to be singled out for pet single issues.
It would still not stop private-members Bills, but they would have far less chance if the government (especially the ministers) held to a position of not undermining the territory legislatures. If an issue is a genuinely national matter, the Commonwealth should use whatever power it has to legislate for the whole nation, or leave the matter alone.
The Northern Territory will one day be a state. Its self-government arrangements are a step in that direction. Its properly elected Assembly has passed a law that should be respected. It may be contentious, but it is certainly not off the planet; indeed 75 per cent of Australians support what it has done, according to recent polls.
The ACT is slightly different. It will never be, and can never be, a state. But the Federal Parliament, has passed state-type functions to the local legislature. Along with them has come the financial burden. Having passed the burden of self-government, it should allow the benefit of it. The Federal Parliament insisted the ACT have state-type funding, with concomitant detriments to services, it should have state-type responsibilities and power over all state-type issues, with the exception of the Federal Parliament’s interest in maintain Canberra as the seat of government and the national capital.
That exception makes it reasonable for the Federal Parliament to maintain an interest in some things that might otherwise be state-type issues … such as law and order around the parliamentary precinct and various planning requirements which affect the character of the city as the capital. For that reason the ACT can never be a state. It was created to house the federal capital. Its people should have a level of democracy similar to people in the states, but not so as to compromise the legitimate concerns of the federal parliament in maintain a place for the seat of government. But that has nothing to do with euthanasia, which should be a matter for the people of the territory, in the same way as it is a matter for the people of Western Australia or Victoria.