Page 437 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 18 February 2015

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The letter continues:

The Menslink CEO wrote two letters of support to the Court for Lloyd Burch that are on the public record. This is common practice for our CEO and other Menslink staff—

I repeat, “This is common practice for our CEO and other Menslink staff”—

who write to the courts (and other bodies), in cases where young men have demonstrated their commitment to making positive changes in their lives.

When the matter was reported to the Menslink Board in October 2014, they took immediate action to address the issue and consequently reported the breach to the Office of Regulatory Services and affected stakeholders.

The Office of Regulatory Services received the final incident report in December 2014 and recently issued Menslink with an infringement notice fine of $2500.

As an experienced community organisation successfully working with young people for more than a decade we are extremely disappointed this incident occurred. A critical review of our policies and procedures has been conducted and improvements have been made to ensure our activities are best practice and understood, implemented and maintained at all levels of the organisation.

And here is a quote that Mr Hanson ought to pay a lot of attention to:

The fact remains that the board demonstrated good governance in reporting the breach to ORS and hopes that the recent negative media does not suppress the responsibility of other organisations—

read “the Canberra Liberals”—

to demonstrate responsibility and integrity.

That is at the heart of what we are debating today. I would have thought the Leader of the Opposition’s time in service would have left him with some understanding of what leadership is, Madam Speaker. I would have thought he would have some understanding of what character is. I would have thought he would have some understanding of what dignity is, of what moral fibre is and of what service to the community and the greater good look like. After what we have seen in the last week, I am seriously questioning those values. He is showing he is a man with no scruples, someone who is prepared to seek even the smallest scintilla of political advantage at the expense of a young man—and that is ultimately what this is about.

If Lloyd Burch’s mother was not sitting two chairs down from me, this would not be debated in this place. It is all about politics. It is all about seeking a grubby little bit of political advantage. I can understand that; when you are 20 points behind in the polls, I can understand why you would want to get every little bit of advantage. When you have seen the chaos your political party is currently in, of course you would want to


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