Page 2743 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 21 November 1989
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funds there, a tax bill somewhere else, will channel money from the pockets of newly created criminals into the public revenue.
We will not need to expect an excessive standard of diligence and efficiency from the police, the courts and the tax officers to recoup something equivalent to what is now being collected from the non-violent erotica industry. There may be cause for moral satisfaction that an unacceptable activity is banned, but the contribution to the revenue from that activity will go on. Society will remain a "pimp", since that is the word some have chosen for the industry.
The fact that the link to public revenue will be just as obscure as it is now, with various illegal or fringe activities, will do nothing to improve the moral climate in which we live. It is not just a matter then of having little faith in prohibition. It will leave us no better off than we are now, and in the balance of things we will be a lot worse off. What we need is other approaches, approaches which recognise that the only realistic approach to controlling an activity which we have qualms about is to bring it within the law. That way we can hedge it in, limit it, defuse its force.
Let me give you one possibility. The best weapon against a practice we do not like is to impose financial disincentives on its practitioners and consumers. This Bill, in fact, puts in place a mechanism which can be used to impose precisely those disincentives. By increasing the tax at any time, any government can make it more and more difficult for non-violent erotica to find a market. The more expensive the product, the more tax it is possible to raise.
People opposed to non-violent erotica ought to see in this tax not an affirmation of that material but a vehicle for restricting it. It is a more rational and controllable method of imposing limits. If it is more gradual, and thereby requires a little more patience than does banning, it will be far more successful. I believe that members of this Assembly, whether they are opposed to the videos or not, have good reason to combine forces and to support this Bill.
Debate (on motion by Mr Whalan) adjourned.
Sitting suspended from 4.40 to 8.00 pm
CHINESE STUDENTS IN CANBERRA
MR COLLAERY (8.00): I am grateful for the indulgence of the house in scheduling this matter for 8 o'clock. I have heard that some of our audience have gone to another parliament. Be that as it may, that is a communication
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