openoffice.org import causing swap-death (excessive memory use)

We got swap alerts on pear and eventually had to kill the process. Memory usage was visibly increasing within the space of a few minutes:

importd@pear:~$ ps fuwwxx | grep 27499
importd 14784 0.0 0.0 7624 808 pts/0 D+ 08:08 0:00 \_ grep 27499
importd 27499 69.4 59.9 6457848 3663916 pts/6 Rs+ 07:15 36:23 \_ /usr/bin/python /srv/importd.launchpad.net/production/launchpad-rev-12177/scripts/code-import-worker.py 416569 hg http://hg.services.openoffice.org/DEV300
importd@pear:~$ ps fuwwxx | grep 27499
importd 27499 69.7 60.6 6967096 3707156 pts/6 Rs+ 07:15 40:37 \_ /usr/bin/python /srv/importd.launchpad.net/production/launchpad-rev-12177/scripts/code-import-worker.py 416569 hg http://hg.services.openoffice.org/DEV300
importd@pear:~$ ps fuwwxx | grep 27499
importd 19886 0.0 0.0 6208 636 pts/0 D+ 08:15 0:00 \_ grep 27499
importd 27499 70.2 62.9 7130472 3848096 pts/6 Rs+ 07:15 41:58 \_ /usr/bin/python /srv/importd.launchpad.net/production/launchpad-rev-12177/scripts/code-import-worker.py 416569 hg http://hg.services.openoffice.org/DEV300