Page 3099 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 10 September 1991
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the Gungahlin site, referred to, if I recall correctly, in a report to the former Alliance Government either by the Priorities Review Board or by CARD in terms of opportunity cost. Perhaps before we go too much further in self-government we should look at the general direction in which we are going in terms of forward cemetery planning.
Mr Jensen referred to a cemetery at Tuggeranong. I did not know that it had one.
Mr Jensen: No, I did not say that it did - in the future.
MR COLLAERY: A future one in Tuggeranong. I do not anticipate having my bones resting in Tuggeranong. No doubt Mr Jensen does. I would think that perhaps we can find more traditional and more accommodating cemeteries than those in Woden and on the flatlands.
Finally, there is history in our grave sites, as Mr Duby said. I clearly recall some scandals throughout the older parts of Australia, particularly one in my home village of Corrimal, where the private trustees owned the cemetery. Even though the cemetery itself was given by my family 150 years ago, a new priest has moved a whole range of gravestones belonging to my family over many generations and put them up against the wall - sandstone gravestones facing the weather - so that he can make space for newcomers. The rights of intervention in those situations are limited, as we have found. I fully concur with what Mr Duby says about the need to look carefully and quickly at how private trusts are maintaining some of the heritage graveyards in this Territory.
MRS GRASSBY (8.45): Mr Speaker, I just could not help it; I felt that I had to say something about cemeteries. Everybody else has had something to say, it is a very serious business and I really did have to say something. I had the feeling earlier that Mr Jensen was going to go into the business of selling funeral plots. I could give him a few tips on it. I did sell funeral plots in America once. You can sell with or without a view. Of course, one might ask: Why would you want to worry about a view when you are dead? There is the answer that, if you have a plot with a view, when your friends come to see you they will stay a lot longer than they would if you did not have a plot with a view. Perhaps Mr Jensen was not really serious about that.
Mr Kaine: You had better have an interesting inscription on your headstone.
MRS GRASSBY: That is right. The Minister has just informed me that we have the cheapest plots in Australia. We must not let that secret out; otherwise we will probably have everybody wanting to come to Canberra to be buried, and that would be very serious. The fact that Mr Collaery has lost half of his relatives and cannot find them in the graveyard is very sad. One always likes to know where
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