Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Cormann interrupts. If he does not think that is a right that the people of the Northern Territory or the ACT should have and if the opposition in this place wants to have that right withheld from the people of the territories, it is flying in the face of its own history, because it was Mr Kevin Andrews who brought in the legislation that overrode the ability of the territories to legislate in the matter of euthanasia back in 1996, and it was passed by both these houses. That is a prohibition which is not altered by this legislation today. That prohibition, which was supported by a free vote of both chambers—I voted against it, but it was still supported by a free vote of both chambers, with a majority of three, as I recollect, in the Senate—will remain on the Northern Territory assembly and on the ACT assembly unless or until some future vote of this parliament changes it. In that sense, this does not restore or give the measure of equality of the territories with the states that you might think at the outset.

I notice that Senator Brandis has said this morning that the opposition does not have the problem with equal marriage that the government has because it is unified—it is en bloc opposed to it. I had not heard that before. That is news, and I am surprised—