Page 369 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 21 February 1990
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Wednesday, 21 February 1990
___________________________
MR SPEAKER (Mr Prowse) took the chair at 10.30 am and read the prayer.
PUBLICATIONS CONTROL (AMENDMENT) BILL 1990 [NO. 2]
MR MOORE (10.31): I present the Publications Control (Amendment) Bill 1990 [No. 2]. I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
I would like to extend my gratitude to the Chief Minister for allowing me to use the services of the legal section and the Attorney-General. Accordingly, I wish to thank those people particularly for the fine work that they did in constantly checking with me, and making sure that they were clear on what I wanted to achieve in the Bill.
Let me start by saying that I do not perceive myself as either an X-video user or an R-video user. Quite a number of people who have phoned and lobbied me about this matter have described themselves as exactly that. They have said, "I am an X-video user", and then have talked about it. In my life I have watched four movies that were categorised as "X". I watched those after I found that I would have to debate an issue that involved them - I thought I should know what I was talking about. In fact, I do not even own a video machine and I do not have one in my office. For me to watch such movies is actually quite awkward and requires quite a bit of arrangement.
The Bill that I have presented looks for the logical, the rational, the middle ground. When Mr Stevenson presented his Bill we heard many arguments on the notion that what goes in comes out. Despite all those arguments about applying that notion of going in and coming out to X-rated movies, at no stage did he refer to the matter of R-rated movies which, as far as I am concerned, is much more serious than that of erotica.
The arguments used to try to get us to ban X-rated movies - and the letters that I have received on this question come from all over Australia, but mostly from rural Queensland and Tasmania - are almost always concerned with violence. But, of course, the question of violence simply does not apply to X-rated movies. The argument that these people present is invalid - the premise does not apply to the situation; therefore the conclusion is invalid.
The Bill that we are now discussing restricts the publishing of the material involved in X-rated and R-rated
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