Nearly 1,300 people have signed Labor Senator Katy Gallagher’s petition calling on the Senate to ask Liberal Senator Zed Seselja “to end the ongoing discrimination against citizens of the ACT, and restore the ACT Legislative Assembly’s right to make laws for its own citizens”.
Senator Gallagher’s petition states that Senator Seselja blocked Northern Territory Liberal Senator Dr Sam McMahon from including the ACT in her private member’s bill to restore territory rights to legislate on euthanasia. Senator McMahon’s bill will only include the NT, not the ACT.
“I did originally try to include the ACT in it, but in my conversations with Senator Zed Seselja he wasn’t keen to do that,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Senator McMahon. “If Zed’s not interested and not going to support it, I don’t think it would be worth doing. I’d be better off just doing it for the Northern Territory.”
Senator Gallagher accused Senator Seselja of “standing in the way of restoring the ACT Legislative Assembly’s right to make laws for its own citizens”.
All ACT politicians want to annul the Euthanasia Law Act 1997 (the ‘Andrews Bill’), which prevents both Territories and Norfolk Island from passing laws permitting euthanasia. It was introduced to repeal NT legislation that permitted euthanasia, but in the last quarter-century, more Australian jurisdictions have legalised euthanasia or are considering doing so.
“Canberrans should have the same democratic rights as our neighbours just over the border in Queanbeyan,” Senator Gallagher said. “The fact that Zed is ‘not keen’ to see this happen really goes to show who he’s in politics for: himself.”
Canberra Daily asked Senator Seselja’s office whether he wanted to respond to these allegations; they did not reply.
For Senator Seselja, euthanasia represents an “ethical threshold” that should not be crossed. “Make no mistake, this is not about Territory rights, this is about human rights,” he wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2018, explaining why he opposed assisted dying.
He fears vulnerable people – “the sick, the elderly, the disabled, the depressed, the lonely” – would be pressured into suicide, “their lives considered less worthy”. In Oregon in 2016, nearly half the people who died from assisted suicide considered themselves a burden on family, friends, and caregivers.
Assisted suicide could also undermine personal autonomy, Senator Seselja argued; in California, for instance, a woman with a terminal illness could receive insurance coverage for assisted suicide, but not for chemotherapy.
Senator Seselja was also shocked that nine- and eleven-year-old children with incurable diseases (cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, brain tumour) have been euthanised in Belgium, the first country without age restrictions on assisted suicide. (The Netherlands legalised euthanasia for terminally ill children aged between one and 12 last year.) In the Benelux countries, assisted suicide was legal for dementia, alcohol and drug addiction, mental illness, and disability.
“The fact is safeguards have time and again been eroded in other jurisdictions,” he said.
Palliative care – “properly resourced and administered” – could “nurture people towards a dignified death”, Senator Seselja states, but he worries governments would find it easier and cheaper to kill patients. He quoted Victorian palliative care professionals who believe legalising assisted suicide or euthanasia would be unethical: “Such a move would not enhance choice, but instead reduce choice around the care and support for those in need”.
In the ACT, he maintains, palliative care resourcing from the ACT Labor Government was “not up to scratch”. He quoted Dr Michael Chapman, Canberra Hospital’s Director of Palliative Medicine, who said that Canberrans “received too little or too late or no [palliative care] services at all”.
Senator Seselja’s opposition to euthanasia has angered the progressive left. “He thinks his own conservative personal views are more important than the democratic rights of Canberrans,” Senator Gallagher said.
On her Facebook page, several posters complained of Senator Seselja’s Christian beliefs, and alleged he did not represent his constituents’ interests.
Senator Gallagher’s petition, started on Monday, had received more than 1,275 signatures by Thursday morning.
“I’m not surprised that there are a lot of Canberrans who want to send Zed a clear message,” she said.
“I wanted to make sure that Canberrans have a way to express this view loudly and clearly that can then be presented to the Senate. I would urge anyone who supports territory rights to sign the petition and send Zed a message.”
