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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-10-30 Daily Xml
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WHITE RIBBON DAY

Ms THOMPSON (Reynell) (15:36): Originally, I intended to spend my time talking entirely about the joys of the Fleurieu Peninsula Food and Wine Festival Fiesta, which has been occurring during October. I will abbreviate that, because there is something else I now want to speak about. I place on record my congratulations to the committee and the participating restaurants and wineries in the Fleurieu Food Fiesta, particularly Victoria Minenko (chair of Fleurieu Peninsula Food) and Cheong Liew (ambassador for Fiesta). I invite members to look at the Fiesta website to see what they missed if they did not participate.

The reason I want to focus my remarks on something else today is that I saw an item on Adelaidenow, just before I came into the chamber for question time. It was posted at 12.19pm today. The article states 'Man proud of love rival's car' and continues:

A jilted lover has gone from crushing despair to crushing his rival's car. Plant hire boss Martyn Wright, 30, used one of his 13-tonne diggers to destroy the Toyota land cruiser owned by his employee and childhood friend Anthony Simpson, The Sun reports. Mr Wright 'saw red' after discovering risqué text messages from Mr Simpson, 22, on his partner Linda Kirkham's mobile phone, Chesterfield Magistrates' Court in Derbyshire, England was told. He was given a conditional discharge…But outside the court he said he did not regret his actions. 'Every bloke in the country who has been in the same position as me would cheer what I did,' the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

The original article in the Daily Mail states:

I brooded on it for a couple of weeks before I did what I did, but everyone in the village knows I'm not a man to be messed with. If you mess with fire you're going to get burnt. That is just one thing you don't do to your mates.

My alarm and concern was raised by this article because in the response in the Daily Mail there were comments such as: 'I like this man! Martyn, you could do a roaring trade hiring your digger to other disgruntled boyfriends. A few years ago I would have been one. Good luck mate.'

This week we have seen the launch of White Ribbon Day, which is about men standing up against domestic violence in our community. I was not able to be present this morning, not being a man standing up against violence, but I am pleased to say I have heard many reports of it. I hope I am accurately quoting what I believe Andrew O'Keefe said. Andrew O'Keefe is the host of Deal or No Deal and the Chairman of White Ribbon Day. Although I have not been able to obtain his speech, I have been able to obtain some other remarks from a media release of 5 September in which Andrew O'Keefe says:

Boys receive all kinds of messages about what it means 'to be a man'. Many of these are conflicting and potentially harmful to their development, particularly the expectation to 'be tough' and 'in control'.

My reports from that meeting—and I hope the member for Goyder will signal to me if they are inaccurate—indicate that, at that time, Mr O'Keefe talked about the problems of boys being taught to be in control and that the ultimate form of domestic violence, in his opinion, was when a father kills his children in order to seek revenge on his wife.

Mr Griffiths interjecting:

Ms THOMPSON: The member for Goyder confirms this. The part of domestic violence that is not always understood is the part about control of what a partner does. It is usually a man controlling a woman, but it is not always. However, the overwhelming majority of cases are. I invite The Advertiser to get on board with what Andrew O'Keefe is doing and to challenge these assumptions about being a man means always being in control.

Where is the role of the woman in this situation? She is silent in the story. She is a free individual able to make her own decisions. She might have made a wrong decision, but it was her decision, and what message does she get when someone fights like that over her?

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