Momentum is again growing to allow the ACT to legislate on voluntary euthanasia, as Victoria moves to introduce an assisted dying scheme from 2019.
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The ACT and Northern Territory are unable to make laws on euthanasia, because of "Andrews Bill", a private members' bill named for conservative backbencher Kevin Andrews, introduced after the NT legalised euthanasia in 1995.
ACT Labor politician Tara Cheyne asked the ACT branch's annual conference on Saturday to support her motion and petition to remove Andrews Bill and once again give the territory the right to legislate on assisted dying.
"This motion does not commit the party nor the government towards regarding voluntary euthanasia not voluntary assisted dying," Ms Cheyne said.
"What it does ask is that national [Labor] conference commit to giving us back our right, the ACT's right to determine our laws for ourselves.
"We are beholden to outdated legislation, more than 20 years old, made by people who don't represent us, rendering us a second class jurisdiction."
The Victorian government is currently considering letting certain sufferers of advanced and incurables illnesses access a medically-assisted death. Politicians will be given a conscience vote on the issue later in the year.
In NSW, a draft bill which would give terminally ill over-25s access to lethal drugs was released earlier in the year.
Labor Member for Fenner Andrew Leigh believed it was time to re-examine the law and let the ACT at least have a discussion about voluntary euthanasia.
"I don't think any sensible observer now looking at state and territory governments around Australia would say anything other than the ACT legislature is at least as capable as any state or territory legislature," Dr Leigh said.
"You've got to remember the context in which the Andrews Bill was put in place too. The ACT Assembly was only a handful of years old at that stage, it was a kid. It's now grown up and proven itself as a mature Assembly and the notion the federal parliament should constrain its lawmaking power in this area is old fashioned."
Ms Cheyne, who supports voluntary euthanasia after watching her own father's decline, said while most other states were at least having a discussion about assisted dying, the ACT was "hamstrung".
"We're in a situation at the moment where potentially both Victoria and NSW are going to make laws on this issue and in the ACT it's totally moot because we're hamstrung by 20-year-old legislation made by people who don't represent us," she told Fairfax Media.
"This isn't about policy, it's about the fundamental right that we have same ability as the states to determine our own laws regarding it. Whether those laws are for or against is a secondary question.
"We need to restore the ability to determine our own laws for ourselves in our own assembly."
It's not the first time there's been a push to abandon Andrews Bill in recent years.
A Greens petition calling for it to be scrapped got 1000 signatures last year.
ACT Senator Katy Gallagher has previously described the bill as a "legislative sledgehammer" and Chief Minister Andrew Barr has also argued for its repeal.
