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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (6 May) . . Page.. 1439 ..

MR HUMPRHIES (continuing):

with Mr Bender which was about Mr Bender being careful about who he chose to legally represent him. She then told Mr Bender about what she described as a bad personal experience with Mr Bernard Collaery in a recent case, but she did not go into any detail about it. I did not participate in this conversation or offer any comment about Mr Collaery to Mr Bender. I have never expressed a view to the Bender family on Mr Collaery's abilities as a legal representative.

Y and I were at the Bender home for over an hour. We were offered cakes and coffee. At no stage did I or Y feel unwelcome. In fact, Mr Bender talked to me about his difficult life in Australia as a migrant and Mrs Bender showed Y the new renovations to their home and showed us more photos of Katie. When we left I embraced Mrs Bender and her daughters and shook Mr Bender's hand goodbye.

I relayed my discussion with Mr Bender to Mr Skrnjug, and we agreed that we should undertake a number of things to help the Bender family. I rang the Croatian Welfare Centre to organise a counsellor from the Centre to go to the Bender family and see if they needed counselling of any sort. I discussed at the Croatian Congress meeting things the community could do to help the Bender family - this included collecting money for a memorial for Katie; organising her school friends to be in national costume at her wake and organising an informal roster where members of the Croatian community would go to the Bender family's home to comfort the family.

I subsequently rang the Bender family, on at least one occasion, to see how they were going and whether there was anything I could do to help them. I presumed that they welcomed my concerns and felt that this was confirmed by Anna telephoning me and explaining to me how distressed her family was that they had given their most recent photo of Katie to a television station, on the proviso that it be returned within the hour. However, more than 7 hours had passed and the television station had not returned the photo. As a result I rang the television station at least 3 times and demanded that the photo be returned to the Bender family immediately.

I have always been a well regarded and respected member of the Croatian community and when community organisations or even individuals have difficulties, they contact me to see if I can assist them in some way. This can be seen by the fact that I have been elected, more than once by the Croatian community to a national body called the Croatian National Congress. I have been asked to be the President of that organisation but declined due to my work pressures. I was also nominated to represent Australian Croatians at the International Croatian Congress Conference in Brijoni, in Croatia in 1996.

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