Page 1971 - Week 06 - Friday, 6 May 2005

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Much better if he had come out in the press and made a joke about it. He wouldn’t have come off looking like a fool and everyone would have laughed with him, as opposed to at him.

First we have Corbell taking off around the world to look at suburbs and gardens, and now this. Oh, by the way, whatever happened to the $10 million that was promised during the election for public housing?

I know I have critised Stanhope before and will continue doing so but this time I’m frankly astounded.

Comment number seven reads:

And I thought that there would be more efforts by the Chief to explain the recent budget…digging up an article from the bowels of the press clipping archives that the ALP have amassed over the decades just displays how insignificant we must look to rest of Australia.

Mr Stanhope, please stick to running the local council, that’s what the public (voted on) expect you to do.

I will not read the rest, it is just banter between the two. This really calls into question the judgment of the Chief Minister, and clearly that is a view reflected by the Canberra community.

Holocaust Remembrance Day
Graffiti

MR STEFANIAK (Molonglo) (11.35): Firstly, I would like to thank the Canberra Jewish community for putting on an absolutely magnificent and very moving ceremony last night to commemorate the holocaust. I think it is crucially important that we never forget what happened in World War II—how one madman and his legions in Nazi Germany tried to exterminate a whole race of people based on religion.

Whilst there have been some horrendous examples since—I think at the ceremony Pol Pot’s name and Rwanda were mentioned, and I think Ms MacDonald mentioned Rwanda yesterday—surely Hitler’s attempt to exterminate all the Jews is the most appalling thing in the history of mankind. It must never occur again. We must always remember it, and I think it is crucially important that this be done. As I have said before, it concerns me—and there were instances given again last night—that in Europe, especially, there have been recent acts of anti-Semitism.

A comment was made last night about a 17-year-old French student who went to a Jewish school because, when the teacher in the state school was teaching about the holocaust, a few students indicated that it did not happen. The state school did not have the guts to say that that was wrong and tell the teacher to continue. They pulled the holocaust out of the curriculum. I think that is particularly reprehensible, too, because it indicates that people are trying to rewrite history. We should never, ever let that happen.

Finally, on that point, I think Lucy Polack’s magnificent and moving talk as a survivor was quite inspiring. I was pleased to see her later because she was helped immensely by


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