Comment CANBERRA, Australia — A new bill was introduced into the Australian parliament on Monday that seeks to lift a 25-year ban on physician-assisted dying in two territories. Australia’s sparsely populated Northern Territory in 1995 became the first place in the world to legalize voluntary euthanasia. However, the landmark law was overturned by the Australian parliament two years later after four patients were legally assisted to die, leaving the Northern Territory one of the last parts of Australia where doctors’ deaths remain banned. “For too long Australians living in the territories have been treated as second-class citizens,” government lawmaker Luke Gosling, who represents a Northern Territory electorate, told parliament. He and fellow MP Alicia Payne introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would allow the Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory legislatures to legalize assisted dying. The two territories do not have the same legal rights as the six states that have enacted euthanasia laws in recent years. The Australian Parliament does not have the same constitutional power to overturn state laws as it does territory laws. The two regions account for less than 1 million of Australia’s population of 26 million people. Payne, who represents an electorate in the Australian Capital Territory that includes Canberra and two villages, described her bill as urgent. He described killing the terminally ill as an “incredibly important conversation that we’re not allowed to have simply because of where we live.” Conservative government lawmaker Kevin Andrews introduced the bill in 1997 that prohibited territories from enacting assisted dying laws. A Conservative government was back in power in 2018 when a bill failed to overturn the ban. That bill lost two votes in the Senate. Previous attempts also failed in the Senate in 2008 and 2010. Since then, Victoria became the first state to legalize assisted dying in June 2019 and New South Wales in May this year became the latest state to pass its own euthanasia laws. The federal government of the center-left Labor Party, elected in May, announced it would allow its lawmakers to vote on the bill according to their conscience rather than toeing a party line. The opposition conservative Liberal Party has also allowed conscience votes on previous euthanasia bills. The Catholic Church is pressuring federal lawmakers to vote against the bill.
