Mander sorry to women
QUEENSLAND Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says Tim Mander is out of touch and his complaints of a “major gender imbalance” on a female-strong government board are offensive.
Mr Mander, the Opposition’s corrective services spokesman, used a budget estimates hearing on Thursday to ask Police Minister Mark Ryan how Queensland’s new Parole Board could be considered diverse when 68 per cent of its appointees were women.
“How can you describe these appointments as diverse when there is such as major gender imbalance?” he asked.
Mr Ryan responded to the Liberal National Party MP with incredulity.
“I can’t believe we’re getting a question complaining about the number of women appointed to a parole board. My God, what will it come to next?” he said.
Ms Palaszczuk said she was offended by Mr Mander’s remarks.
“I found his comments were simply out of touch, I found them offensive, I think most women in this state would find them offensive,” she said.
“Isn’t it wonderful we’ve got two-thirds of a board with women who were selected on merit.”
The price might be an Australian record. It is slightly higher than $50,200 someone paid for a bottle of the same drop in 2004.
“We’ve done some research and can’t find any evidence of there being a bottle sold for more than this,” MW Wines managing director Nick Stamford said.
It’s thought fewer than 20 of the 1800 bottles believed to have been made by winemaker Max Schubert still exist.
Mr Mander yesterday apologised for his line of questioning. “I apologise unreservedly for my line of questioning during Budget estimates yesterday,” he said in a statement.
“It was never my intention to reflect poorly on the women on the Parole Board.”
But Mr Mander said politicians on both sides of the aisle had made “ill-considered remarks” during the budget estimates hearings this week.
“As community leaders we should strive to do better.”
The premier doubted it was a simple error of judgement, committed on the run.
“A lot of time and effort goes into preparing for estimates,” she said.
“He had a deliberate line of questioning. He had obviously sat down and written those questions.” A 91-YEAR-OLD man has died after falling into a trench in his backyard in Sydney’s west and spending the night stranded in the cold.
He lived alone in his Glenmore Park home and was found alive by his son yesterday morning.
Police believe he may have spent the night trapped in the trench in chilly conditions.
Paramedics worked to stabilise the injured man when they arrived about 8am but he died shortly after.
“I could cry, actually, just thinking of him lying alone in that trench,” a neighbour, who asked not to be identified, said.
“It’s such an awful thing for his son to find him.”
The neighbour said she believed the elderly man was having plumbing work done in his back yard.
The man had moved to the area just over two years ago, the neighbour said, and his wife died suddenly shortly afterwards.
Police do not consider the death suspicious but a report will be prepared for the coroner. PROTESTERS have marched in Kalgoorlie after the West Australian man who ran over and killed 14-year-old Elijah Doughty was acquitted of manslaughter.
The 56-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was instead convicted in the Supreme Court in Perth yesterday of dangerous driving causing death for knocking the teenager off a stolen motorcycle at Gribble Creek, near Kalgoorlie.
He was sentenced to three years in jail.
Grace Robinson, whose store is across the road from the Kalgoorlie courthouse where the crowd gathered, said it was a “very peaceful protest” of about 200 people.
The tone was much different from the riot outside the courthouse when the man was initially charged in August 2016. On that occasion, people threw rocks and bottles at buildings, cars and police.