Mr ABBOTT (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs)(10.58 a.m.) —We spend a lot of time in this parliament debating matters such as schools and hospitals, and these are all very important, but this bill is about the essence of what it means to be a human being. It is, in fact, the most important bill currently before the parliament and, like many others, I am disappointed that it is not being debated in the main chamber.

I am against the Northern Territory's euthanasia bill because it does not confer a right to die, it confers a right to kill. It is not about turning off life support machines, it is about the administration of lethal injections. I support a right to die because it is one thing not to keep alive someone who would otherwise be dead but it is an entirely different thing to kill someone who would otherwise be alive.

Under Australian law, no-one is compelled to live. Attempted suicide is not illegal anywhere in Australia. It is no longer illegal in the Northern Territory, which only repealed its law this year. Suicide is one thing, but killing, even consensual killing, is an entirely different thing again. Medical execution is no more acceptable than judicial execution: allowing someone else to administer a lethal injection is no more acceptable than allowing someone else to administer a fatal revolver shot. The fact that the victim may say that he or she wants it does not make it right, because no-one is capable of making a sound decision on matters such as this in the grip of paralysing fear or agonising pain.

I am very conscious of Mr Bob Dent's statement when he said that someone kept in his condition and kept living like a dog would be reported to the RSPCA. That is entirely the point—human beings are not dogs. It might be sad, but we do get rid of our problem animals. It is completely unacceptable ever to get rid of people, however many problems they might be causing us.

As I said, the right to die is not the same as the right to kill or be killed. States rights, such as they are, can never be at odds with human rights. Human rights are always more important than state or institutional rights. Human rights are in some sense absolute, whereas institutional rights are more matters of administrative convenience or practical efficiency.

In the course of this debate, a number of speakers have said that they are opposed to euthanasia but they support the Northern Territory's right to make law. That is a version of Voltaire, saying, `I oppose what you do but I defend your right to do it.' If someone has the power to stop something and refuses to exercise it, that person is complicit in the act.

This is not something that this parliament has no power to stop. Let us be very clear about this. This national parliament has the right to stop the Northern Territory's euthanasia program. This is not an area where misguided policy can be tolerated in the cause of social harmony or in the interests of proper give and take.

If a state tried to re-introduce capital punishment, this parliament, quite rightly and properly, would try to intervene. If a state tried to introduce a system of apartheid, this parliament, very properly, would try to intervene. If a local council tried to introduce confiscatory fines for breaches of trivial ordinances, this parliament or other parliaments would try to intervene.

We do intervene constantly in environmental, industrial and economic matters. These are comparatively small things. If it is right to intervene in those things, surely it is right and proper to intervene in the most important question of all—the question of life and death. If this parliament cannot decide these matters, what is the point of having a national parliament?

I deeply respect my friend and colleague the member for Flinders (Mr Reith). I deeply respect his views on the desirability of the devolution of powers but, with respect to those views, I do not detect any move to hand industrial relations back to the states. `None of my business' is a terrible cop-out. It is a terrible cop-out, and it is not something that should ever be heard here in the national parliament.

I have heard lots of people in the course of this debate telling us that euthanasia happens anyway. I think it is important for those people to ask themselves these questions. Is legalising it going to make the practice more or less widespread? Is legalising euthanasia going to make the very old and the very sick feel more or less vulnerable?

I know that the deepest anxiety for the old and the weak is worrying about being a burden. I know it, because every time I see my grandmother, she frets about this very problem. But if euthanasia were to become legal, what additional, self-generated pressure might these people be under—let alone the pressure from relatives eager for a quick inheritance, let alone the pressure from medical administrators anxious to have another empty hospital bed? Euthanasia, it seems to me, is the ultimate form of economic rationalism—the ultimate statement that everything has its price, even human life.

Consider the case of a comatose patient lying in a hospital bed, with little hope of recovery, every day a burden on his or her family, every day a burden on the taxpayer. Of course it would be easier to give such a person one cheap, final injection, rather than to give him or her an endless series of expensive injections. It would be much easier, but it would not be right because convenience never justifies acts as grave as this.

It is always easier to get rid of our problems rather than to live with them but, in the course of trying to do this in the Northern Territory, we risk turning human beings into disposable items and turning human life into a plastic, throwaway commodity. Compared to the holocaust and to the killing fields, what is happening in the Northern Territory at the moment is, perhaps, a very small outrage. We could not stop those other things. We can stop this. We must stop it. We cannot allow it to happen here in Australia.