The push to overturn a 25-year ban on the ACT and NT legalising assisted dying has cleared its first hurdle, passing the House of Representatives 99 votes to 37 on Wednesday morning.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition leader Peter Dutton joined the majority of MPs who supported the passage of the Restoring Territory Rights Bill, following a brief debate this week that pitted the issue of territory rights against moral views on voluntary euthanasia.
Solomon MP Luke Gosling, centre, and his Labor colleagues from the NT and ACT welcomed the passage of Restoring Territory Rights bill through the lower house on Wednesday. Credit:James Brickwood
Both Labor and Coalition MPs were granted a conscience vote on the private member’s bill, which repealed Howard-era laws that prevented territory parliaments from enacting assisted dying laws.
Employment Minister Tony Burke, who in the 1990s backed the campaign by former Liberal MP Kevin Andrews to bar the territories from legalising euthanasia, was one of only five Labor members who voted against the bill.
The bill, which was co-sponsored by government backbenchers Luke Gosling, the MP for the Darwin seat of Solomon, and Canberra MP Alicia Payne, will now proceed to Senate where it is expected to face a tougher challenge.
Gosling said he hoped the bill would pass the Senate during the September sitting period, as he appealed to colleagues to view the bill as ensuring that territorians had the same rights as Australian living in other states.
“I’ve had some good conversations even this morning with some senators who were seeking that reassurance that this vote, in of itself, is not legislating voluntary assisted dying, and they have been happy to support the territories on that basis,” Gosling said.
Known as the “Andrews laws”, the 1997 Euthanasia Laws Act banned the territories from legalising voluntary euthanasia and was enacted after the NT briefly became the first jurisdiction in the world to do so in 1995.
The majority of MPs who opposed the bill to repeal the Andrews laws were from the Coalition ranks. However, opposition frontbenchers Paul Fletcher and David Littleproud voted for it, as did a number of backbenchers including Bridget Archer, Ian Goodenough, Nola Marino, Melissa Price, James Stevens, Jenny Ware, Darren Chester, Warren Entsch and Llew O’Brien.
In recent years, the federal ban has seen the ACT and NT become outliers as states legalised voluntary assisted dying, with NSW the last to do so in May this year.
An attempt to overturn the ban in 2018 narrowly failed in the Senate by 36 votes to 34. But the composition of the chamber has changed significantly since then, with supporters of the bill banking on a progressive and expanded crossbench to secure its passage.
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