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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1950 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

Thiele says it's far more common for people to just give their name. "I'd like to think both Mr and Ms will eventually be dropped."

Septuagenarian Barbara Buick describes herself as a feminist, daughter of a feminist and mother of a feminist. A former librarian and publisher's editor, she has served on the Women's Electoral Lobby and National Federation of Women. She supports the use of Ms because she believes it has neutral sexual connotation.

"If you think being a married woman is the be all and end all in life you'd prefer to be referred to as Mrs. But I like to think women have an independent life - a life of their own.

"More and more females and males are preferring to drop all honorifics and just use their first names and surnames. Maybe it will evolve so we will all drop appellations. And, if we're going to use titles, we only use ones that mean something such as professor, reverend, doctor, which are related to work, rather than gender," she says.

But if all titles are dropped the quandary is how in the English language do we confer respect to our elders or betters. European languages have formal and informal means of address which confer different levels of respect without being gender specific. It remains to be seen whether we all enter the next century on a first-name basis.

I ask that I retain my honorific of Ms until they are dropped, with the specific intent of picking up the very point that I think women have the right to not be referred to simply by a title which denotes whether they are married or not married.

MS FOLLETT (5.28): Mr Speaker, I would like to follow up very briefly on the comments made by Ms McRae. The first thing that I want to say is that all titles, whether they are Mr, Mrs, Miss or whatever, are courtesy titles in our current society. I therefore very firmly believe that people ought to be addressed by the courtesy title which they prefer. For my own part, I prefer to have no courtesy title whatsoever, but I realise that it is not always convenient, particularly in debate in this place, for that preference to be honoured.

I did want to take issue in the gentlest possible way with my old friend and colleague Mr Hird, who on many an occasion, if not every occasion, has made an absolute meal of using my courtesy title, namely "Ms", which Mr Hird continues to pronounce "Mez", in heavily ironic tones. For Mr Hird's edification, I would like to inform him that the

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