Page 2767 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 21 November 1989
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of materials. If the Opposition or some other party in this Assembly were to move a Bill which took an existing classification already determined by the Commonwealth and said, "This classification will be banned in the ACT", that would also not be a Bill dealing with the classification of materials for the purposes of censorship. With respect, Mr Speaker, we are perfectly at liberty in this debate to engage in every aspect of it, including the moral questions arising out of censorship and X-rated videos.
Mr Duby: We are clearly not; we are talking about taxing something.
MR HUMPHRIES: I am sorry, Mr Duby; your view is clearly wrong. I suggest that, if you were to get proper advice, you would find - - -
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Humphries, please do not debate across the floor.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, as I said, it is quite clear that the evidence in this field shows that there are behavioural changes that occur as a result of the exhibiting of pornography, even to mature adults. I think my leader quoted earlier today from a study conducted by Canadian psychologists, Check and Sommers. It was into the impact of pornography on men, in particular. I want to quote a few paragraphs from that study. The study consisted of the analysis of the responses of a group of 44 women who had suffered severe battering by their partners and a comparison with a group of women who had not been battered. This showed a very clear difference between the two groups.
Mr Berry: Talk about the tax.
Mrs Grassby: Yes, talk about the tax.
MR HUMPHRIES: I am talking about pornography, Mr Speaker, and that is entirely relevant to this debate.
Mr Berry: This is not the pornography Bill; this is about tax.
MR HUMPHRIES: It is a pornography Bill, Mr Berry. Mr Speaker, the studies showed different responses from those two groups of women in answer to questions relating to the frequency with which their partners viewed pornographic material. The question that was posed to them was: as far as you know, how often does your partner read or view Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler or other magazines of this type? Among battered women, the frequency was that 11 of the battered women - that is, a quarter of the battered women - reported several times a week, compared with none among the comparison group, the non-battered women. Fourteen of the battered women said that their spouses viewed them several times a month, compared with seven in the comparison group. If you go down to the bottom of the table you will see
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