Page 2696 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
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Events in Eastern Europe
MR DUBY (5.43): Mr Speaker, I endorse the comments of Mr Collaery in that matter. I would like to address some comments made by Mr Humphries in his debate closure speech. I also agree with him entirely that the bringing down of the Berlin Wall was a victory of the human spirit over conditions of privation.
However, one of the things that he mentioned - and, of course, being Mr Humphries, he cannot resist scoring points - was that the great flow of folk from the totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe was of people fleeing from totalitarian socialism. I noticed on Tuesday all the way through his speech he referred to people fleeing from socialism. Well, it should be put on the record clearly that people who were fleeing from East to West in most cases fled from totalitarian socialist states to democratic socialist states. It does not really matter whether they are socialist or not; the situation is that they were fleeing from totalitarian states to democratic states.
Holocaust
MR BERRY (Minister for Community Services and Health) (5.44): Mr Speaker, Mr Collaery, of course, answered for me in his usual fashion. The fact of the matter is - and I must have a bit of a shot at Mr Humphries here - that 9 November comes only once a year. It was the anniversary of Kristallnacht and it was an appropriate time to raise the issue. It had nothing to do with what we may have thought about the anti-communist fervour of the Liberal Party. It was about properly remembering a significant event. The Labor Party is well known for its support of human rights under any regime and, of course, I was very disappointed that neither Mr Humphries nor Mr Stefaniak mentioned the human rights abuses by some of the rightist regimes around the world.
Mr Collaery: It was a comment. It was nothing to do with the Berlin Wall.
MR BERRY: Well, just at this very moment I was listening to the debate and that is the debate I am referring to. I think that would have given some balance and more credibility to their argument. I must say that the issue is that the remembrance of the Holocaust and the events which surrounded it was appropriately raised on that day. It was not a party political thing; it was a means of drawing it to the attention of the members of the Assembly and promoting a remembrance of it. I think that what ought to be recognised is that all people would oppose imperialism of any sort, whether it be leftist or rightist, and I think it would have been nice to have had some balance in the Liberal approach on that issue.
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