Page 1295 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 23 August 1989
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If this Labor minority Government does not take the chalice and run with it, the Rally will offer the lost components of the union movement a vibrant, realistic alternative to the factionalised, inadequate approach of this Government.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
ADJOURNMENT
Motion (by Mr Whalan) proposed:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Leadership of Residents Rally
MR WHALAN (Deputy Chief Minister)(6.06): During the debate earlier today I advised the Assembly about the challenge to the leadership of the Residents Rally and I mentioned that the secret meeting that I referred to was held on 19 July. I have now spoken to both Sue Douglas and Chris Donohue and they have confirmed that the meeting was held on 28 July. So I do apologise for mentioning the wrong date and I wish to have the record corrected.
Poland
MR STEFANIAK (6.07): This has got nothing to do with the Residents Rally meeting. Mr Speaker, I rise just to bring members' attention to the fact that today is 23 August 1989 and it is the fiftieth anniversary of a most unfortunate historical event that really has affected us all in the world. There are two points I wish to raise in relation to that: Firstly that event was the signing in Moscow of the von Ribbentrop-Molotov pact which led to, initially, the dismemberment of Poland in September 1939 and of course the start of World War II, which saw so many people killed and so many people uplifted from their normal environments throughout the world.
As a result of that pact, many countries suffered, no more so than Poland. Certainly some of my father's relatives were killed during the Nazi occupation and he also lost, as a result of actions by the Soviet Union, a number of colleagues at Katyn Forest when Stalinists murdered 15,000 Polish army prisoners they had taken when they stabbed Poland in the back in September 1939. As a result of World War II, Eastern Europe fell under the reign of Stalinism and indeed a large number of people, including many citizens of the Soviet Union itself, were killed under that perfidious regime.
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