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It is time that my Liberal-National colleagues in Canberra hear the message from the Australian people. The values that the Liberal party represents enterprise, liberty, opportunity, a strong economy and a secure country are as important today as at any time in our history.

The Liberal party suffered massive defeats in our heartland not because these values stopped speaking to the electorate but because the electorate stopped hearing a Liberal party speaking for these values.

Moderate Liberals lost their seats because their electorate thought they hadnt done enough on the issues that mattered to them. Its important that the moderate Liberals still in Canberra now find their voice and assertively represent centre Australia. Great MPs do not put party before principle because political parties are the principles MPs stand for.

Too often the previous government indulged in culture wars, egged on by the rightwing commentariat; failed to hear, respect and act on the concerns of women; and pretended facts for example, that humans are causing climate change didnt exist.

And the facts are these: women earn less than men for the same work; women retire with half the superannuation as men; women take on vastly more of the load when it comes to caring for our children and our seniors. One woman dies every week in Australia as a result of domestic or family violence.

No party can stand for liberty and opportunity if it fails to see these issues and want to address them. A party which truly stands for liberty empowers women and affords them the same dignity, opportunity and respect it affords men.

Similarly, no party can seriously say that it stands for a strong economy and a secure country when it is failing to act on climate change.

Climate change risks an environmental catastrophe. It wont just be future generations who will judge our leaders on the action we take a pretty clear judgment was handed down on Saturday night.

Some will say we cant go further on these issues because of the base. Lets be clear, the traditional Liberal party base watches more ABC than Sky After Dark.

Not a single one of the Morrison governments lost seats went to a rightwing party or candidate. One Nation and Clive Palmers United Australia party performed poorly while Labor and the Greens snatched seats.

These seats are not coming back to the Liberal party until the issues these voters care about are sincerely addressed.

Sincerity does not mean some tweaks. It means supporting universal, affordable and accessible childcare so that women do not have to choose between having children and having a career. It means acting on sexual harassment at work. It means speaking out against dangerous anti-vaccine and Trumpian conspiracies.

It also means adopting science-aligned emissions reduction targets of between 45% and 60% by 2030 and developing the policies to achieve it. The science says that the black summer bushfires were the beginning, not the end. The fact is that, until the federal Liberal partys policy position responds commensurately to the climate challenge, every record-breaking natural disaster over coming years will make that policy seem out of touch with the challenge at hand.

Not only is it possible for the Liberal party to respond to the challenges of the moment the Liberal party should be the natural party to take action on climate change. It is a core conservative value to act as a custodian for future generations and, with our wind and sun, no country has more opportunity from the worlds push to decarbonise than Australia.

In New South Wales, we are building renewable energy zones, have set a 50% emissions reduction target by 2030 and have legislated our electricity infrastructure roadmap. The roadmap will reduce Australias greenhouse gas emissions more than any other policy in Australian history.

I announced the roadmap with Dom Perrottet at a solar farm in Dubbo when he was treasurer, and with the then deputy premier, John Barilaro. This landmark policy was supported across all the wings of the Liberal party, the National party, the Labor party, the Greens and the independents. We built that coalition by ensuring we reduced emissions in ways that supported more affordable, reliable electricity, and created thousands of jobs in the regions.

The NSW government, led by my conservative colleague and good friend, premier Perrottet, has also made no secret of the importance we place on promoting gender equity.

Last year we started a review into womens opportunity led by Sam Mostyn of Chief Executive Women. I may have commissioned that review, but it was something that Dom had started working on as treasurer. And it is something which we will respond to in next months budget.

The Liberal party is at its best when its meeting the challenges of the time with principles which have stood the test of time. That is what the NSW Liberal-National government is doing, and that is what I hope to see a newly elected Liberal-National government in Canberra do in three years time, having learned the lessons of last weekend.

Original post:
Liberals still in Canberra must find their moderate voice and assertively represent the centre - The Guardian

Pandoras Box, 2021. Marcel Dzama. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner. Art: Marcel Dzama

On Wednesday, the Washington Posts Taylor Lorenz reported on the disastrous rollout of the Department of Homeland Securitys Disinformation Governance Board. Announced on April 27 with a hazy remit to coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security, the initiative generated immediate fierce backlash from conservative pundits and politicians who compared it to the Ministry of Truth in George Orwells 1984. The expert tapped to lead the board, Nina Jankowicz, faced a wave of ferocious, viral, and often personal attacks online as well as scrutiny over her past statements seeming to betray her partisan sympathies. Now, just three weeks later, the Disinformation Governance Board is no more, and Jankowicz has resigned.

According to Lorenz and her sources (other disinformation researchers, as well as staffers in DHS and on the Hill), Jankowicz was taken down by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating and was undermined by a flat-footed, timid response from the Biden White House. The campaign against Jankowicz and the board, Lorenz writes, was a prime example of how the right-wing internet apparatus operates, where far-right influencers attempt to identify a target, present a narrative and then repeat mischaracterizations across social media and websites with the aim of discrediting and attacking anyone who seeks to challenge them. In other words, the Disinformation Governance Board was undone by a textbook disinformation campaign.

This version of the story is richly ironic and tragic. As one Hill staffer told Lorenz, Ninas role was to come up with strategies for the department to counter this type of campaign, and now theyve just succumbed to it themselves. But from another perspective, the rights campaign against the Disinformation Board resembled any other successful advocacy effort to halt a government initiative. As with most activist endeavors, some of the facts were fudged, innocuous statements were deprived of context and tendentiously interpreted, those in charge were depicted as cartoonish villains, and a more complex story was reduced to a fairy-tale struggle between the forces of good and evil not great, but when it comes to political messaging in our polarized age, par for the course. (I can recall quite a bit of Manichaean simplification happening during the Trump years.)

Obviously, I sympathize with Jankowicz. No doubt she faced an astronomical volume of right-wing nastiness, dishonest attacks on her reputation, and genuinely disturbing threats. Im sure the administration could have done more to insulate her from the backlash. But other than that, I dont see how a fully operational Disinformation Governance Board could have prevented this outcome except via the very means conservatives (mistakenly?) feared it would possess. If, as Lorenz is careful to note, neither the board nor Jankowicz had any power or ability to declare what is true or false, or compel Internet providers, social media platforms or public schools to take action against certain types of speech, then how would it have prevented right-wingers from tweeting terrible, dishonest things about Jankowicz? Lorenzs reporting seems to arrive at a Catch-22: The rights campaign to depict Jankowicz as a government censor amounts to disinformation only if she and the DHS were indeed helpless to stop it.

I know, Im being slightly glib. The truth is, I think its important for smart people to analyze the ways in which the architecture of social media facilitates and incentivizes witch hunts and the dissemination of hateful, dishonest content. And the government likely has a role to play in coercing tech platforms to prioritize the public interest over the profit motive in crafting their algorithms. But I dont think it requires any great leap of conspiratorial thinking to find fault with a disinformation board under the aegis of the DHS. Government officials whoever resides in the White House are professional liars. They lie haughtily in the interest of national security, sheepishly in the interest of saving face, and passionately when their jobs are on the line. Would Jankowiczs office have been empowered to counter disinformation coming from her own department? Or only from those criticizing it? And what would its remit have been under the next Republican presidency? As one conservative writer put it, Its not clear to me that Democrats have fully reckoned with the non-negligible possibility that Donald Trump is in charge of the new Disinformation Governance Board in 2 years.

But the other pernicious problem with liberals fixation on disinformation is that it allows them to lie to themselves.

Trumps ascendance in 2016 posed a painful psychic challenge to liberal elites. It suggested the possibility that many millions of Americans were motivated by deep, venomous dissatisfactions with the world they had helped create, that our cultural disagreements were profound, not superficial, and that our perspectives were practically irreconcilable inversions of each other. Political reality seemed to tilt on its axis. How could a man who appeared to them so transparently abhorrent and clownish be welcomed by others as a savior or at least as a tolerable alternative to the status quo?

Disinformation was the liberal Establishments traumatic reaction to the psychic wound of 2016. It provided an answer that evaded the question altogether, protecting them from the agony of self-reflection. It wasnt that the country was riven by profound antinomies and resentments born of material realities that would need to be navigated by new kinds of politics. No, the problem was that large swaths of the country had been duped, brainwashed by nefarious forces both foreign and domestic. And if only the best minds, the most credentialed experts, could be given new authority to regulate the flow of fake news, the scales would fall from the eyes of the people and they would re-embrace the old order they had been tricked into despising. This fantasy turned a political problem into a scientific one. The rise of Trump called not for new politics but new technocrats.

Like other pathological reactions to trauma, the disinformation neurosis tended to re-create the conditions that produced the affliction in the first place. (Freud called this repetition compulsion.) By doubling down on elite technocracy and condescension toward the uneducated rubes suffering from false consciousness liberals have tended to exacerbate the sources of populist hostility. As Joe Bernstein documented in Harpers last year, the antidisinformation industry has attracted massive investment from wealthy Democratic donors, the tech industry, and cash-rich foundations. Hundreds of millions of disinfo dollars are sloshing around the nonprofit world, funding institutes at universities and extravagant conventions across the world. Last months Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference was headlined by Barack Obama and featured Anne Applebaum, David Axelrod, Jeffrey Goldberg, and a lengthy list of other academic, journalistic, and political luminaries. Im sure very interesting ideas were discussed there. But gathering the leading lights of liberalism to an auditorium at the University of Chicago so that they together can decide which information is true and safe to be consumed by the rabble outside strikes me as a hollow exercise in self-soothing, more likely to aggravate the symptoms of our legitimacy crisis (distrust and cynicism) than resolve any of its impasses.

Dont get me wrong: There are obviously hard problems to be worked out regarding technology, speech, and democracy, and I have great respect for scholars working in that nettlesome nexus. But as Bernstein put it, the new class of disinformation experts, however well intentioned, dont have special access to the fabric of reality. If faith in our institutions is to be restored, I dont think it will be accomplished by stigmatizing doubt or obstructing the dissemination of falsehood. After all, faith is not a matter of fact and fiction.

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The Liberal Obsession With 'Disinformation' Is Not Helping - New York Magazine

It is pretty human to crave the approval of peers and to hope for more of the same, even if unconsciously.

But for political parties selling themselves as unifying forces of the middle, broad-based and representative, this way lies atrophy. And death.

Courting the applause of extreme media voices is a formula for narrowing a partys electoral reach.

Yet this is where the Liberal Party of Australia has journeyed over its nine years in office. First under Tony Abbotts ideological zealotry and then through various squalls and culture wars since.

After unsuccessful attempts to address climate policy by Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg the latter being the standout casualty of the 2022 reckoning the preference for clever politics over policy solutions has drawn the Liberal Party further from the great Australian middle, and towards gratifying the sharper grievances of religious conservatives and the electoral gains from suburban outsider resentment.

Throwing out euphemisms like the quiet Australians to camouflage his real project of demonising elites, Scott Morrison told a mining conference a year ago Were not going to achieve net-zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities.

It turns out this was a thumb in the eye to his own partys greatest asset, its rusted-on intergenerational base of cashed-up professionals in its heartland. In the year since, this support base has been not just ignored, but insulted.

Depicted as mere dupes for even considering candidates wanting swifter action on climate change, corruption, and gender equality, life-long Liberals rebelled, voting with their well-heeled feet.

On May 21 2022, Morrisons divisive strategy backfired spectacularly.

His personal appointment of the anti-trans Katherine Deves in Warringah (a once Liberal seat with the second highest pro-marriage equality vote in NSW in 2017) did not turn the election nationally, but its symbolism mattered.

It said everything about the slice of Australia to which Morrisons Liberal-Nationals government had become in thrall.

Dog whistling Devess harmful views to the marginal outer-suburbs where Morrison thought they might just resonate, was a moral low point in major party politics in Australia. But it was also an undiluted electoral disaster.

So how does the party of Menzies forgotten people and John Howards broad church read the result, and then re-tool for recovery?

That task is made far more difficult because so many of the partys leading lights have been washed away in Morrisons great electoral bungle. The most important loss is the aforementioned Frydenberg (it seems) because the erstwhile treasurer and deputy leader represented the articulate urbane centre-ground. Clearly the most gifted and saleable Liberal in the parliament, he was the heir apparent.

His absence highlights that even the early logistical decisions will set the course. Among the few remaining moderates, Simon Birmingham told Insiders on Sunday, who they choose to be leader will set the tone of the opposition, but influence its policy also.

Therefore, it matters. Assuming Frydenberg does not scrape through on a favourable postal vote surge, Peter Dutton is the both the most likely leader, and the most conservative.

His selection would inevitably take the Liberal Party further from its disillusioned traditional blue-ribbon supporters - certainly in Victoria but elsewhere also.

Voters who walked in 2022, would keep walking.

Here, the basic maths are crucial. It is hard to imagine the Coalition even getting to 76 seats in future without recovering some or all of the teal seats.

Read more: A narrow Labor win and a 'teal bath': all the facts and figures on the 2022 election

Yet history shows that good independents consolidate their wins, suggesting these seats would be very hard to recover at any time, let alone when policy and personnel options are this limited.

Besides, finding genuinely local, top-shelf female candidates who are both capable and willing to take on a Zoe Daniel or a Monique Ryan and who are prepared to campaign over almost a whole term, will be a supremely difficult task.

Making that commitment for a party with two more average conservative men running it (names like Angus Taylor and Dan Tehan have been mentioned) is even more difficult to picture. And if one of them is Peter Dutton, probably impossible.

This explains why Liberals are casting about for a woman to take one of the two leadership posts, probably that of deputy. Karen Andrews and Sussan Ley have been floated.

Surveying the carnage, Birmingham observed that the wellsprings of the weekend rout began a long time ago with the needlessly drawn-out marriage equality vote, (a full-blown culture war) and the rejection of the National Energy Guarantee championed by Frydenberg and Turnbull.Both political storms had registered negatively with soft Liberals in the heartland seats, leaving many distinctly unimpressed.

Yet as the beleaguered party considers its options, entreaties to double-down on the very things that alienated it from its base are already being aired. The logic can be well hidden.

A hardliner from South Australia, Senator Alex Antic, told Sky News on Sunday,

>The Liberal Partys experiment with the poison of leftism and progressivism must be over.

Other prominent conservatives on the network suggested Liberals who had become pale imitations of Labor were the ones defeated, whereas hardliners who stood up against climate policy and who oppose a First Nations Voice to Parliament, had been successful.

These were their takes after the most significant shift to the left by mainstream voters in memory.

They highlight the influence of ideology and what looms as a wrestle for the centre-right soul that lay ahead.

Sensible Liberals meanwhile, have some big decisions to make.

They could listen to the extremist voices in partisan media, remembering of course its what got them to here. Or they could be more self-critical.

In a democracy, its never a terrible idea to listen to what the voters have just told you. Their message wasnt hidden at all.

View original post here:
Morrison's 'great electoral bungle' leaves the Liberals decimated and heading in the wrong direction - The Conversation Indonesia

In the autumn of 2021, simmering rage over issues of womens safety and respect in the workplace, triggered by Brittany Higgins allegations, galvanised into the March4Justice rallies. Tens of thousands of women young and old and their male, trans and non-binary allies, came together to declare enough was enough.

One of the features of the mass demonstrations was the array of pithy homemade placards, held aloft to create a sea of verbal dissent, a cardboard homage to the finely crafted banners of the early 20th-century suffragette rallies. My favourite placard, held by a grey-haired woman in a purple T-shirt, declared My arm is tired from holding up this sign since the 70s.

But the most common sign was a take (down) on the infuriating adage boys will be boys, now updated and edited to read boys will be held accountable.

Last night, Australia showed us what happens when the boys in power are held accountable.

The 2022 federal election has delivered a demonstrable, undeniable reckoning of the gendered balance of power in this country. The pattern is clear: a Morrison government that stubbornly refused to listen to women was punished by the electoral death of their, if not firstborn, then at least favourite, sons.

Some have wondered even lamented that the orchestrated fury of the March4Justice rallies rapidly dissipated. But its now clear that the women of Australia were following another adage, the feminist exhortation: dont get angry, get organised.

Make no mistake: what happened last night was not an aberration.

If Australias history wasnt so conveniently parsed and packaged to exclusively showcase the achievements of white men, we might have seen it coming.

Weve been here before.

In 1902, Australia became the first country in the world where white women could both vote and stand for parliament. With the passage of the Franchise Act, 800,000 new voters were instantly added to the electoral rolls.

As one American journalist at the time put it, the world fairly stood aghast, breathlessly waiting to see what effect this paradigm-shifting political experiment in representative democracy would create.

The answer came in 1910. The Womens Federal Political Association (WFPA), led by Vida Goldstein, Australias most influential and internationally recognised suffrage campaigner, had been assiduously educating female voters in the exercise of their new citizenship rights. Goldstein had become the first woman to stand for election to a national parliament in 1903. She ran as an independent because she fundamentally repudiated party politics, believing it encouraged mediocrity and inspired corruption.

But Goldsteins aim was always collective, not personal. I believe it is the duty of woman to take her share in the work to protect her interests, Goldstein said in her first campaign speech in 1903, and that she should take the deepest interest in political matters.

By 1910, the WFPAs service-oriented, educational efforts paid off.

As even a cursory glance at Wikipedia will tell you, the 1910 election heralded several major political milestones.

It was Australias first elected federal majority government as well as Australias first elected Senate majority.

The first time that a prime minister, in this case Alfred Deakin, was voted out in an election.

And perhaps most significantly, the worlds first Labor party majority government at a national level.

What youll have to dig a little deeper into the archives to discover is that when Andrew Fisher became Australias fifth prime minister, it was widely acknowledged that he and his party owed their victory to women. At a time before compulsory voting, female voters vastly outnumbered male voters. Crucially, the Labor party, mindful of the nations new constituency, campaigned on three discreet female virtues: moderation, respectability and competence.

Challenging the boys own bravado of politics-as-usual was rewarded at the ballot box.

But it was not only womens votes that mattered. Just as critically, it was their organising abilities that attracted the attention of political pundits. Deakin himself conceded that the Labor leagues had worked hard to enrol female voters and that it was mostly women who worked as the recruiters. Their women pass from house to house, Deakin noted, enlisting those of their own sex an army of unpaid volunteers, discipline, unity and the complete efficiency of its machine.

Writing (under a pseudonym) in the London Morning Post, Deakin announced it is a new era in politics without precedent for its methods.

Those methods door to door, kitchen table conversations, local fundraising networks, word of mouth became key to political campaigning.

And the progressive side of politics was not the only beneficiary of womens enfranchisement and political education. The Australian Womens National League, a conservative organisation established in 1904 to buttress the monarchy and empire in the antipodes, fight socialism and educate women in politics, quickly became largest womens association in the country. Its now widely acknowledged that the financial and organisational support of the AWNL was critical to the formation of the Australian Liberal party in 1944.

But what the 2022 election demonstrates is that, today, both major parties have failed in offering policies and leadership on issues that clearly matter to the most women: climate action, integrity and gender equality.

Many will rightly conclude that the results of the 2022 election represent a rejection of the way that parliamentary politics is currently conducted in this country: centralised, stage-managed, aggressively partisan.

But this is not new. The teal wave of centrist independents, backed by the grassroots, community-fuelled Voices of movement, represent the historic power of womens systematically coordinated, organised, laser-focused anger. Not placards. Not street protest but realpolitik.

Turns out there was nothing fake about the sensible white-collar women challenging so-called moderate Liberals in affluent electorates. (Another sexist tactic to undermine the credibility of professional women, suggesting they are merely puppets of wealthy men pulling their naive, impressionable strings.) The fact that Zoe Daniel dedicated her win in Goldstein to the woman the seat was named after is an indication that her moral compass had a clear true north. Today I take her rightful place, Daniel announced.

Daniel will be joined in that place a seat at the table, a voice in parliament by a record number of female MPs. Not only that, but perhaps more importantly, the winning candidates independent and Greens, House and Senate have committed to action on womens safety, domestic violence prevention, pay equity, universal childcare and other measures which will appreciably benefit the lives of all women.

The results of this election also prove, if empirical proof was needed, that enough men will use the power of their own electoral privilege to vote for female candidates and the issues and values they represent, recognising that good governance is gender neutral.

In her book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Womens Anger, the American political commentator Rebecca Traister notes that the righteous fury of the unrepresented has always been feared, and therefore brutally suppressed, at the point of bayonet, yes, but more insidiously by the gaslighting of history. The confidence trick comes when we begin to hear one another and understand that we [are] not as isolated in our rage as we had been led to believe.

Women have always been the sleeping giant of Australian politics. I suspect the leviathan potency of womens electoral rage will never again be underestimated.

View original post here:
History tells us women can turn elections: the Liberals should have listened - The Guardian

As David Pocock looks setto oustZed Seselja and become the first ACTsenator from a minor party, former Liberal chief minister Kate Carnell says her party has many lessons to learn.

Mr Pocock, the independentcandidate and former Wallabies captain, is on the verge of unseating Liberal senator Zed Seselja after securing a strong vote in the federal election.

He said had been"overwhelmed" bythe amount of support for his campaign.

"We tried to keep it positive,"he said.

"Trying to make it about people and I think that really drew 2,200 people in Canberra to volunteer and I was blown away by the support."

Mr Pocock said the increased support for independents across the country showedthe public wantedmore from its representatives.

"It's a clear message that people want politics done differently," he said.

"Communities have realised that they can actually have someone standing up for them that doesn't have to toe a party line."

In a statement on social media, Senator Seselja congratulated Labor federally and said he was proud of his teams campaign.

However, he stopped short of conceding his seat.

At this stage, it is too early to determine a result for the second ACT Senate seat," hesaid on Facebook.

"Much of the vote is yet to be counted, including significant numbers of pre-poll and postal ballots, which traditionally provide a boost to the Liberal count."

Follow all the post-election action as vote counting continues

While the count shows SenatorSeselja is currently ahead of Mr Pocock, mostminor parties urged their supporters to preference Mr Pocock over Senator Seselja, making the prospect of a Liberal victory highly unlikely.

Pre-poll and postal votes are being counted today, with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) still focusing on first preferences.

"If it stays really tight on first preferences, we might have to go all the way in this Senate contest, which will be some weeks," AEC spokespersonEvan Ekin-Smyth said.

Labor's Katy Gallagher has already secured the first ACT Senate seat, and all three lower house seats within the territory remain in the hands of Labor.

The ACT government has also been led by Labor for two decades, so the Liberals losing theirACT voice in the Senate will shift the balance of power significantly.

Former chief minister Kate Carnell said the situation was not good for democracy, but said Canberrans had been clear that Senator Seselja was not the right man for the job.

"What I've seen is Zed lose the small 'l'Liberals,"Ms Carnell said.

"Canberra is a centre to the centre-left electorate,it always has been, and the positions Zed has taken on a range of issues have really been conservative-right."

The Liberals polled so poorly in the ACT's lower-house seats, that the AEC is even recounting the seat of Canberra on a two-party preferred basis between the Greens and Labor.

Ms Carnell said the Liberal Party needed to change its image in Canberra.

The thing the Liberal Party needs to do is realise they have got to support women, she said.

[ACT Opposition Leader] Elizabeth Lee is doing a great job in the Legislative Assembly but we have got to get more women into winnable positions.

Ms Carnell also said it was essential for whoever ranin the ACTto represent the values of Canberrans.

We, as Liberals, have got a lot of soul-searching to do to see how we can better represent the people of Canberra, she said.

Mr Pocock has vowed to hit the ground running in the Senate, saying one of his first acts would be to introduce a private senators bill to overturn the federal ban on the ACT introducing or debating voluntary assisted dying.

"It makes no sense that in 2022 we don't have the same rights as states to actually debate and legislate on issues that affect us,"he said.

Ms Carnell agrees, saying Senator Seselja lost Canberrans'support for not backing territory rights, saying it was "at odds with representing the ACT".

"With regard to assisted dying, which the majority of Canberrans have supported for a really long time, Zed just wasn't supporting the view of Canberrans,"she said.

Despite Labors Senate vote falling, Katy Gallaghers position in the upper house is secure.

Senator Gallagher will also form a key part of Anthony Albaneses cabinet and she will be sworn in alongside Mr Albanese later today.

She said the Liberals had paid for not representing Canberrans.

Canberrans will vote for the people who represent them on issues like territory rights, climate, integrity, anti-corruption, she said.

That is reflected in the vote.

Senator Gallagher said the ACT would be in a better position to be represented with Mr Pocock in the second ACT Senate seat.

During the campaign, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr urged Canberrans to putMr Pocock as their second preference after Labor ahead of the Greens.

"The tide is turning with every state and territory now being able to debate its matters around euthanasia and past laws,"Senator Gallagher said.

"I think the rest of the country is also wondering why the territories are not allowed to do that."

Re-electedMember for FennerAndrew Leighbelieves the new Labor government will be able to move swiftly to restore territory rights.

Dr Leigh said he would like to be one to introduce the bill that would repeal the 1997 Andrews Bill.

"I hope that it will be backed by opponents and supporters of euthanasia, that we can see this fundamentally as a territory rights issue," he said.

"That people in the federal parliament will say, 'well, let's leave it to the legislators of the territories to figure it out, whatever my personal views on voluntary assisted dying'."

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Posted21h ago21 hours agoSun 22 May 2022 at 10:45pm, updated15h ago15 hours agoMon 23 May 2022 at 5:28am

Link:
Liberals in the ACT 'have a lot of soul-searching to do' as David Pocock looks likely to secure Senate seat - ABC News