How the ACT turned itself into its own mini-republic

Legalising hard drugs, euthanasia for young people, taking over efficient faith hospitals, banning a future for gas ... Canberra is a green-left social experiment on steroids.

‘The Labor Party will always stand up for territory rights,’ says Katy Gallagher. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Lately, the wider Australian public has perhaps become aware of some disturbing events in the ACT. The Higgins saga, when the capital was presented as a hotbed of youthful orgiastic goings-on, and the fiasco of the Lehrmann prosecution, seemingly impervious to inquiries, has penetrated into the wider electorate but those of us who live here are more agitated about what is happening right here that affects our lives.

Believe me, among the local population there was much more concern about the Calvary Hospital closure than Shane Drumgold’s ineptitude.

The federal Labor government has shown it is unwilling to have anything to do with the rogue ACT government: first, by passing the Restoring Territory Rights Bill; second, by its unwillingness to intervene in the Calvary Hospital takeover; and third, by refusing to interfere in the ACT’s legalisation of hard drugs, despite the concerns of Border Force.

ACT Labor has been in power for 22 years, and currently as a green-left coalition it is more Green than Labor. Its stranglehold on government has been so prolonged that it regards the territory as a state in all but name. There are serious federal political moves to shore this up by increasing the number of senators, as endorsed by the ALP national conference, and ridiculous local moves to bring in voting for 16-year-olds.

Along with all this “progressiveness”, the ACT has an independent view of itself as a mini-republic for social experiment­ation. Consequently, under the sway of the Greens, there are almost no extremes of social engineering they will not introduce.

Legalisation of all hard drugs for personal use is just one. The Greens want to enable children as young as 12 to change their gender, the schools forced to comply. Already, parents are unable to exercise normal authority to take children out of the territory for therapy other than affirmative.

On top of that there will be no gas in a decade. New suburbs don’t even have gas pipes. Our much-vaunted green energy comes from NSW and soon the sale of petrol cars will be banned in the territory.

Meanwhile, the ACT government is taking over a Catholic public hospital while the main Canberra hospital cannot provide an EEG to a young person who had a seizure. The list goes on and on.

Lately, the impetus to get more independent power for the ACT using the “restoration of territory rights” argument was the ongoing quest by the left to introduce euthanasia, which in the ACT could be extended to teens as young as 14. Federal Finance Minister Katy Gallagher crowed in a leaflet in our letterboxes “because of the Prime Minister’s support, Canberrans now have their rights restored”. One might ask: What rights? Why should a territory have the right to pass such laws?

Last week, methylamphetamine, cocaine, ecstasy, heroin and GBL worth about $120,000 were seized in the ACT. Between September 11 and 15, police executed 13 arrest warrants that resulted in the seizure of prohibited firearms and weapons, cash, large quantities of steroids, suspected stolen property, a ballistics vest and two pill presses. Do people in the territory want this? Well, no one asked us. It certainly wasn’t proclaimed in the Labor manifesto before the last election, and a recent online poll in the Riotact, the local news and whinge fest, had 60 per cent of ­respondents against.

But just voting them out is easier said than done. If the latest moves to increase ACT representation in the Senate from the current two senators are successful, the left-green representatives in the federal parliament will only shore up the local power of the left in the territory and encourage the ACT government’s ability to go its own way – as evidenced by the recent passing of the Restoring Territory Rights legislation.

The territory doesn’t need more senators, although the ACT population is only 100,000 fewer than Tasmania, which has 12 senators. Chief Minister Andrew Barr has expressed a preference for increasing the number to four senators. Former Liberal chief minister Gary Humphries says three, which he has pointed out would achieve a better balance.

“The Labor Party will always stand up for territory rights,” declares Gallagher, especially as Canberrans, conveniently for Labor, vote left, and lately for left-leaning independents such as senator David Pocock. Pocock has proposed that the ACT should have six senators, tripling its number, and that their length of service should double from three years to six. This would bring them in line with the rest of the country. Zach Smith from the CFMEU, who proposed the motion to increase the Senate numbers at the national conference, wants the territories each to have six senators.

Basically, this will mean an unrepresentative number from the left and an imbalance in the upper house. Because of the way senators are elected, the numbers in the upper house are usually balanced so it is rare for a major party to have a majority. Increasing the number of senators from the ACT (and Northern Territory) as proposed by the ALP conference potentially will make the current left majority in the upper house much more likely in future.

The Labor conference also voted to oppose interference in territory matters – whether it be voluntary assisted dying or the compulsory acquisition of Calvary Public Hospital or, apparently, to stop the legalisation of hard drugs, as the rejection of a move by Peter Dutton to put the brakes on the ACT’s latest foray into radical ­social experimentation shows.

But that’s not all. Only this week, the push to move local Canberra even more to the left is being given impetus by a truly daft proposal to give the vote to 16-year-olds. Naturally, this will favour the Greens. Will it make it into legislation? In Canberra, stranger things have happened.