Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to speak tonight on the adjournment debate to congratulate Blacktown Girls High School and six students in year 10: Shuravi Paul, Jade Lambert, Myo Khine, Shae-Lee Hourigan, Tatupu Vaoga and Rachelle Lupingna. These students at Blacktown Girls High participated in a program called Future Problem Solving Australia. It is an initiative that aims to give young people the skills to design and promote positive futures for the society in which they live. The aim of Future Problem Solving is essentially to develop critical, creative and futuristic thinking skills.

In October last year the team travelled to Perth as regional representatives where they emerged as national champions in the Community Problem Solving Division. They are the only public school in New South Wales to reach the national round and now the only public school in Australia to be invited to the international round. I am pleased to say that the international round was held at the beginning of the month in Michigan, USA, where these students were judged overall winners in three categories: education, health and civic services. I wish to congratulate their coaches, teachers Martina Rapisarda and Narelle Best. I particularly want to congratulate Blacktown Girls High community for the environment that they obviously encourage. This is an outstanding achievement by these six students from Blacktown Girls High. Mr Speaker, I hope that should they accept my invitation to come to Parliament House you might be pleased to receive them and perhaps even pass on your congratulations as well.

On a less happy note, in an article in the Daily Telegraph on 16 June 2008, a constituent in my electorate, Mr Garry Nean of Lethbridge Park, said that his son was allegedly misquoted and labelled a bludger. Mr Nean claims that he and his family were randomly approached by a reporter, David Barrett, and a photographer from the Daily Telegraph while they were outside his son Steven’s home. He claimed that David told him he was trying to understand the lifestyle situation for families in relation to the budget. Mr Nean told my office that David did not immediately identify himself or who he worked for until Mr Nean asked for identification. So much for the journalists’ code of ethics.

David asked Garry if he was working and Garry replied that because of an operation and as a result of a workplace accident he now has a caged fusion to the back and is unable to work and therefore receives the disability support pension. Garry’s wife, Noeleen, is on a carer’s pension, while Steven is also on a disability support pension. Garry alleges that Steven was misquoted by the Daily Telegraph reporter. Instead of saying that Steven would ‘wake up at 8.30 am and then it’s coffee, cigarettes and bludge all day’, Garry claims that Steven actually said that in the morning he would have a cup of coffee, a smoke, then take the kids to school.

Mr Speaker, you would agree that there is a great disparity between what was printed in the article and what Steven had allegedly said. Garry claims that he asked David if anything would be printed and that David said it would not. Garry said that he asked David not to print anything. After Noeleen arrived home, Noeleen called David Barrett, the journalist, and again asked if anything would be printed. However, this time the journalist said that it depended on his editor and the circumstances of other people interviewed. Following the release of this article, Today Tonight approached Garry at his house and asked to do a follow-up interview, which he declined.

I do not think it is correct for journalists to prey on vulnerable people in our community, and I think it is a very serious allegation to misquote them. I hope the Mount Druitt Community Legal Centre will see what legal redress my constituents have to such abuse by an important profession, by individuals who should know better.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 9 pm, the debate is interrupted.