Page 4826 - Week 16 - Thursday, 29 November 1990
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MR SPEAKER: Mr Moore, please sit down. Mr Duby, please withdraw the "Shut up" comment to Mrs Grassby. It should have been directed to me.
MR DUBY: I withdraw it, Mr Speaker, and I withdraw it, Mrs Grassby.
MR SPEAKER: I believe that the question is valid. Please proceed.
MR DUBY: Mr Speaker, today the Canberra Times published a letter from Mr Durrant of Young, New South Wales. He was complaining about receiving a parking infringement notice and at the same time quoting what I thought to be a very incorrect and malicious statement saying - - -
Mrs Grassby: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: he said "what I thought to be". It is an opinion.
Mr Connolly: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: the Minister is saying "what I thought to be". We said that it was a question seeking an opinion. He is now giving his opinion.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Connolly! If we are going to start on this tack we will never get any questions through. It is your question time. Mrs Grassby, you asked a hypothetical question concerning future action. Please ask your question a different way.
MR DUBY: Mr Speaker, in my view and the view of all the members of this side of the Government, parking inspectors are a hardworking and dedicated bunch of people who perform a difficult job which, in almost all circumstances, is done with commonsense, in a cordial fashion and with good grace.
I would like to read into the record some of the phrases used in this letter by Mr Durrant today. He says that he has always considered parking inspectors and their keepers some of the more abhorrent forms of life on earth, and that on a sliding "disgust" scale he would rank them alongside tapeworms, religious fundamentalists, Andrew Peacock and TV soapies. He says:
Just watching these sad, desperate people go about their gruesome business to me says civilised humanity is simply a myth.
He finishes by referring to them as "scrounging mongrels" and by saying:
I can only hope these rejects develop some lousy disease for the festive season: they certainly deserve it.
I am absolutely amazed, first of all, that the Canberra Times published a letter of that level of abuse. I think that in a lot of ways it is typical of things that appear in the Canberra Times these days.
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