The Northern Territory parliament's speaker has acknowledged becoming a state is the only way to stop Commonwealth interference in territory law-making, as politicians from the ACT and Northern Territory petitioned the federal parliament to extricate the issue of territory rights from euthanasia.
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ACT Speaker Joy Burch and Northern Territory Speaker Kezia Purick delivered motions to Senate president Scott Ryan on Thursday, rebuking senators over the failed euthanasia vote last month and calling on federal parliamentarians to stop discriminating against citizens depending on whether they lived in a state or territory.
Section 122 of the Constitution enables the Commonwealth to override any laws made by the territories, even though both jurisdictions have been self-governed for decades.
States can also make laws on euthanasia while territories can't, thanks to bill introduced by Liberal backbencher Kevin Andrews to overturn the Northern Territory's assisted dying laws in 1997.
The ACT's parliament passed its first ever motion of remonstrance last month, after a private members bill from Liberal Democrats Senator David Leyonhjelm to repeal Andrews Bill and restore territory lawmaking rights suffered a shock defeat in the Senate.
The bill had been tipped to get up by a slim margin but failed by two votes, after intense lobbying from groups opposed to voluntary assisted dying.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr vowed it would not be the end of the push for territory rights, and Ms Burch said the motion she was giving to Senator Ryan would ask senators to reflect on the democratic rights they had denied to territorians.
“Why does a neighbourhood 20 kilometres away have rights I don't have. It’s not fair, it’s unjust, it’s illogical," Ms Burch said.
"This is our home, we live here, our families are here, our neighbourhood, our schools are here. This is not for someone in another state that just thinks this is a temporary workplace to make decisions about what affects us and our lives."
Ms Purick said there was no guarantee there would not be future interventions from the federal government, and the motions were a "show of strength" from all parties.
"This is not the first time the Commonwealth has come into the Northern Territory. They came in and stomped on us with the intervention. The Kevin Andrews bill was another classic example. What’s to say it might not happen in the future?" Ms Purick said.
"Why is it that those numpties in the Senate think it’s okay to pass legislation or not pass legislation that affects the people in the Northern Territory? I just say it's not good enough. Half of those senators wouldn't even know where the Northern Territory is."
Ms Purick said becoming a state was the only way to end federal interference.
"The Northern Territory has done a lot of work over the last 20 years in regards to the path towards statehood. It’s not an easy process, it is complicated, it is complex and regrettable, it does involve talking to the Commonwealth government in regards to terms and conditions but statehood is the key to this yes," she said.
"If we had statehood this would have never happened. They cannot go into the states of Australia and do what they’ve done to the Northern Territory."
However the ACT's speaker would not be drawn on whether she thought the ACT should become a state too.
"The solution is simply to overturn a bill that was passed in federal parliament a number of years ago. They wrote it in, they can write it out," Ms Burch said.
