Page 2791 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 21 November 1989
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the Australian self-belief and aspirations of the Australian people or, as the draft national capital plan puts it, the summit of national affairs and achievements.
The other point we have made is that the Bill is more than a taxing instrument. It sets up a franchising structure for the industry. In the absence of uniform legislation, the ACT Act, if it goes into force, will be out of step with the attitude of other States. It may detract from the dignity of the national capital and may damage our family tourist image which we have been working to develop. In that sense, Mr Speaker, I think the ACT will stand alone, like a sort of "phallus in wonderland".
By incorporating the industry into the tax and revenue structure of the Territory the industry is given status. It could, for example, compete for one of Mr Whalan's small business awards and otherwise attract incentives and encouragement from government. This could make us the subject of ridicule and condemnation by a large proportion of the Australian population. I am repeating the issues that have been raised in the MLA party room, on which the three MLAs broadly agree.
In terms of civil liberties, the Rally supports basic freedoms, including freedom of choice. Nevertheless, there are widely spread segments of the community which are genuinely, even passionately, distressed about this industry which of itself contains little merit to require preservation or protection. The films, with rare exceptions, have no intrinsic aesthetic or artistic merit. They do not add a lot to the storehouse of Australian intellectual values and, if anything, they pander, in terms of some of the usage to which my colleague Carmel Maher referred, to lower instincts and they tend to degrade the human condition in its perception of itself.
There is also some evidence, as I am sure Dr Paul Wilson will concede, that for some - I stress, for some - susceptible persons pornography is provocative and can trigger latent antisocial activity. That would not be a decisive factor in my considerations, Mr Speaker, but it is one of the elements in the aggregate picture.
Further, Canberra is a city of vision. It promotes the image of government, including the best possible image of men and women. It is antithetical, in my view, for a government to franchise the promotion of an image of men and women, particularly women, which runs counter to the modern aspirations of a sensitive society.
So that brings us to the question: just what is the X category? Censorship throughout Australia is a function that the Commonwealth has taken on itself, excluding Western Australia, so far as I know, and I have not had the chance to research that fully.
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