Warwick Stacey (NSW, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today Crikey has issued a statement about me. It's titled 'One Nation senator warned against giving CPR to dying Belfast man while serving in British Army'. This is taken from a diary that was published by one of my colleagues, and it does refer, in fact, to that very event. A house search was being conducted. An elderly man was very angry at the fact that we were searching his house, and he eventually had a heart attack. He was laid on the floor. His wife, who had been quite agitated during the search, refused to allow us to help him in any way.

I was reported—and this is correct; these are my words—as telling my colleague not to pump his chest as I'd been told that to do a good job on that you had to hear the ribs crack. I didn't think that would be a good look at any subsequent inquest. Needless to say, the media, the following day after the search, exaggerated it, of course, claiming that medical assistance was refused, the ambulance was delayed, the man was assaulted, his wife was assaulted and so on. Later, the Secretary of State for Defence, in parliament, in the House of Commons, said that the search was properly conducted as part of their security duties by the soldiers concerned.

The only point that I'll add from a personal point of view is that my reference to hearing ribs crack came from my own experience of performing CPR on my grandmother, who died in front of me from a heart attack when I was 20 years of age. I, in fact, heard her ribs crack, so I was very aware of the fact that that kind of damage could occur. I trust you'll appreciate that, under the circumstances, to have that kind of thing determined at an inquest would not have been a very positive outcome for me and for my fellow soldiers.