Page 2740 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 21 November 1989
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welfare system; some of the dollars probably even trickle down through Commonwealth grants to find a home - a very temporary home, in my case - in the pockets of members of this Assembly.
The process seems so distant and detached from us that we are inclined not to think of tracing where the money came from in the first place. It is a convenient and comfortable illusion that everything in government coffers comes from an unsullied source. For some, it might be even more comforting to think that the stream flowing from illicit earnings is overwhelmed by the river of taxes on such irreproachable products as alcohol, cigarettes, gaming and betting, military hardware, uranium and so forth.
There may be people who are happy to draw a distinction. There may be people who are willing to say, "Let us go on living off the morally problematic revenue that comes from a high range of morally dubious or outrageous activities. A tax on X-rated videos? No, that is where I draw the line".
This to me is Jesuitical nonsense. What it does avoid is the central question about the nature of a society which is prepared to fund morally acceptable activities with revenue derived from morally unacceptable activities. We are not going to come to terms with that question in a day. We are certainly not going to come to terms with it by singling out one activity like X-rated videos and refusing to collect tax on it.
That may be a salve to a few consciences, but it achieves nothing. Besides, we already collect revenue, or at least have it collected for us, from the erotic video industry. All the same taxes that apply to other industries apply here: company tax, payroll tax, income tax paid by employees, import duties, sales tax, postage rates. There are no exemptions for moral standing.
Do opponents of this tax want us to sign a waiver on their behalf for the funds that usually flow through to the ACT from the industry's existing taxes? Do they want us to demand that the Commonwealth stops collecting tax from all morally dubious sources or that the States stop confiscating income from drugs, illegal gambling, and corruption? I suspect not, but the reality they should be facing is that the luxury of their right to speak out exists because of a society and a political system which is in part paid for by the very thing that troubles them. It is, in a much larger part, also paid for by many other things that would trouble them much more if they were prepared to recognise the link. It is a dilemma, I know, but we should not be looking to reconcile it by opposing one kind of local tax on one aspect of the erotica industry and leaving everything else alone.
Opponents of the legislation, while expecting the Government to go on funding schools and hospitals, to go on
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