Page 1074 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 2 May 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
forgotten. It has left its positive impact on all of us. I am sorry that I was unable to attend Pat’s funeral last Friday, being overseas at the time, but I am sure, as I said, her positive impact on all of us will remain for as long as we all can talk about her in this place and in other places.
Criminal justice statistics
Death of Pat Ticehurst
Genocide
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra) (5.08): I raise several things. The first is a fairly mundane thing. I note, from the December 2005 quarter of the ACT criminal justice stats profile, all the even numbered pages are missing. It goes 3, 5, 7, et cetera. The data is there but the actual offences and the information on the even pages are not there. The minister might like to take that on board, fix that up and redistribute that. I looked at two copies, mine and one on Mr Mulcahy’s desk, and there is a problem.
Might I also join with the Chief Minister and Ms Porter in briefly mentioning Pat Ticehurst. Whilst I obviously did not know Pat as well as members of the Labor Party, I had a number of dealings with her, especially when she was in the Chief Minister’s office. I was always particularly impressed with her friendliness, her professionalism, her dedication to her role, also her cheerfulness. She was a very capable and a very bright and friendly person. I was deeply shocked to hear of her death. I also send my condolences to Noel and his family on the loss of Pat. She will be someone who will be very sadly missed not only in the Assembly but also in the wider community.
Along with the Chief Minister and Karin MacDonald, and I think Annette Ellis and Senator Humphries, I attended, as I usually try to, Holocaust Day at the National Jewish Memorial Centre at Forrest. It was a very moving occasion, as it always is. Relatives and survivors of one of the greatest manmade calamities in history lit six candles, in memory of the six million Jews who perished in World War II.
An interesting talk was given by a guest speaker—interesting in some ways which I perhaps will not go into because he added a few controversial things. But what particularly impressed me about his talk—and it is very worrying—is that genocide has not stopped with the horrendous events of World War II. This guest speaker rattled off a series of places where genocide had continued to this day, namely, Cambodia under Pol Pot and Rwanda. Genocide still, it appears, might be happening in parts of the Sudan in Africa. It is something that World War II has not erased from human nature. That is appalling. And we need to be particularly vigilant.
He mentioned the fact, too, that there are extremists in the Arab world who will not rest until Israel is pushed back into the sea and all Jews there are killed. Sadly, that extremism has been there since the mad mufti of Jerusalem from the 1930s onwards. It is sad to see that, whilst that dissipated for a while, it has not completely gone away. It is something we need to be particularly vigilant about.
The horrendous events of Nazi Germany, where one lunatic and his crazy followers systematically went about destroying an entire people, based on crazy, insane, racial theories, are not in most of our lifetimes but are so recent in our parents’ lifetimes. This led, in a very short period of time, to the death of six million innocent men and women.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .