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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-02-19 Daily Xml
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KANCK, HON. S.M.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON (Croydon—Attorney-General, Minister for Justice, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) (17:23): Good manners dictate that we speak well of departing legislative councillors at a joint sitting of the house to replace them. Now that the joint sitting is over it is time to speak frankly. I served in the parliament with Sandra Kanck from the time she filled a casual vacancy, and we were on opposite sides on debates that were decided by a conscience vote. Any person who had teenage children or loved ones who were prone to depression would remember Sandra Kanck as the person who, on 30 August 2006, sought to publish under parliamentary privilege easy ways to commit suicide.

In debates on euthanasia Sandra Kanck was always irritated by the contribution of members of the Catholic Church. It seemed to me that Sandra thought that Catholics did not have the same rights as other citizens to lobby about the law. She thought that for Catholics to lobby in concert was a kind of conspiracy, and for Catholic MPs to vote against physician-assisted suicide a breach of constitutional principle.

Although she was not religious, Sandra's references to Catholics and the church had the sound of pre-war protestant sectarianism and implied that the Catholic Emancipation Act 1828 was a mistake. During the 2006 general election, the Democrats issued a news release referring to the death of Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) as the death of an 85 year old Polish man in Italy, without using his name or title, and criticised the state government for spending money on a memorial service for him. The news release was headed, 'He's dead. How much money does he need?'

My opinion is that the author of this news release was Hendrik Gout, now a reporter with The Independent Weekly. I asked him to confirm or deny this by email yesterday but, most unlike him, he has not responded. I tried searching for this news release in the Democrats online archive but could find it only in a bowdlerised form re-headed, 'When was the last time three lines worked for you?' Owing to my drawing the attention of Matthew Abraham of ABC Radio 891 to this masterpiece in the course of the election campaign, Hendrik has punished me ever since in the columns of The Independent Weekly. The news release did not win friends for the Democrats in the Polish-Australian or Catholic communities, and they finished with 1.76 per cent of the Legislative Council primary vote.

Members of parliament who were associated with the church were a target of Sandra's. I, along with Joe Scalzi and Stewart Leggett, served with her for two years on the Social Development Committee's inquiry into prostitution. Some of our deliberations were stormy, and I am still impressed by Terry Cameron's intimate and detailed knowledge of the topic. On one inspection of Adelaide's brothels, Terry hopped out of the minibus in which we were travelling and jumped into the front passenger seat of a red sports car driven by a brothel madam to complete the tour.

Sandra Kanck wanted the legalisation of brothels and their registration or licensing. Some of us were sceptical, including Terry Cameron. Sandra feared she did not have the numbers, so her allies sought to disband the committee. After discussions between Sandra Kanck and a sex worker who had been a witness before the committee (Helen Vicqua), the witness petitioned the Governor to disband the committee owing to the aggressive and humiliating questioning by men on the committee. If asking the Governor to shut down a parliamentary committee was Sandra's purpose, the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 were not strong points in her reading of history. When I asked Sandra to give an example of my being aggressive on the committee, she paused and said that I had tapped my pencil aggressively when asking a question of a witness.

Sandra's real gripe was Terry Cameron, but she had thrown a blanket over all of us and, in any case, her complaints about Terry stopped the minute he voted with her on the committee report. Once she was in the majority, Sandra no longer wanted the committee disbanded. In 1998 Sandra Kanck suggested in a question to the then attorney-general that brothels be able to issue gift vouchers.

Members will all recall I think that in November 2004 Sandra Kanck publicly demanded a state funeral for her mentor, former Democrats senator Janine Haines, and then attended a public entertainment rather than the funeral. On another occasion, parliament had to adjourn because she would not sacrifice her evening choir practice.

In the aftermath of the Port Lincoln bushfires, Sandra Kanck told the parliament that the living victims and grieving families could be administered the drug MDMA or, to give it its street name, ecstasy. In 2008 she extended this suggestion to war veterans. Ravers then named an ecstasy pill in her honour. Sandra Kanck invited members of the outlaw motorcycle gangs into Parliament House for a so-called balanced justice forum, but she did not invite any of their victims.

Sandra Kanck's hatred of America was so great that in foreign affairs she applied the principle 'My enemy's enemy is my friend'. In debate in parliament on 19 February 2003, she tried to clear Chemical Ali and Saddam Hussein of the gassing of the Kurdish population of the town of Halabja. Kurdish-Australians know differently and told her so.

In the 2007 federal election the Australian Democrats (South Australian Division) ran a loud and vigorous campaign to hold retiring senator Natasha Stott-Despoja's Senate seat. The candidate was Ruth Russell, whom I debated during the campaign. By contrast, the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) contested the Senate election in South Australia for the first time since the mid-1970s. None of their candidates was from South Australia and they ran no campaign of any kind. All they did was put their name on the ballot paper. It would have meant nothing to any South Australian, bar political junkies and the devout elderly. The Democrats polled 8,908 votes or 0.88 per cent of the total; the DLP polled 9,343 votes or 0.93 per cent of the total.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, an elderly constituent of mine, Albert Geisler, lived alone in a room on the corner of Drayton Street and Fifth Street, Bowden. Albert had often been a victim of break-ins and beatings; he was deaf. One night he heard his window break and realised that it was yet another burglar breaking in. Albert had been a skeet shooter in his younger days. He reached for his rifle and shot the intruder.

Not long after this incident I spent an afternoon alongside Sandra Kanck in a Canberra brothel named A Touch of Class—on the Social Development Committee fact-finding mission—when I heard her tell ABC Radio in Adelaide that Mr Geisler should be charged with homicide. Sandra Kanck has since denied to me that she called for Albert to be charged with murder but, if she did not call for him to be charged with murder—and it is my recollection that she did—she at least called for him to be charged with homicide or some indictable offence.

Negotiating with Sandra about second preferences for the upper house and about legislation was difficult because she did not know how these things worked. Late on election night 2006, when it was clear that Nick Xenophon's ticket was polling about 21 per cent of the statewide vote and the Democrats were polling under 2 per cent, the Democrats were saying that it was still early days and preferences could still see them through. What part of 21 to 2 did they not understand?

The contrast between Nick Xenophon and Sandra Kanck could hardly be greater. Nick respected the humanity of his fellow MPs and tried to understand their values, the legislative process, and the art of compromise so that a constructive conversation with other parties was possible. The South Australian statute book has many marks made upon it by Nick Xenophon, some of them indelible; Sandra Kanck leaves no legislative monument. I may be wrong but I cannot remember, in all those years, her getting a single private member's bill through parliament.

It is as if she had never been.


At 17:32 the house adjourned until Tuesday 3 March 2009 at 11:00.

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