Page 1222 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 24 April 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
What are Mr Stevenson's motives? In the election the only thing that Mr Stevenson told us he was attempting to do was to abolish self-government and to present the voters' veto. Well, the voters' veto does not really relate here. But since some have indicated that his Bill would be worthy of a High Court challenge, one must ask whether this is just another attempt by Mr Stevenson to bring the Assembly into disrepute by having us pass legislation which then fails a High Court challenge. Then when it is shown that we cannot even get that right, he will have made some progress, in his inexorable way, towards abolishing self-government. If that is the case, it is probably quite a high motive, but it is a very different motive from those that others see. I say "high motive" by his standards, not necessarily by my own value judgment.
What are the tactics that these people have used? The tactics start with the use of an invalid argument. An invalid argument has almost always been that these certain pieces of non-violent erotica cause this sort of violence. They then progress from that relationship to another. The relationship between the two is illogical; the conclusion is not based on the premise. If one studies logic, one of the first things that one learns is that the conclusion must follow the premise. The premise in this case is based on something that bears no relationship whatsoever to the conclusion - that is, the arguments are based on violent erotica and not on the matters we are discussing, X-rated movies or non-violent erotica.
We then see a deliberate misuse of statistics. If the motives of these people were high, if their tactics were right and their arguments logical, then perhaps we could be swayed. Let us look at the advertisement that appeared in several newspapers - I have one here from the Canberra Chronicle - in which they quote rising statistics for rape, the statistics allegedly coming from the Australian Institute of Criminology. The Australian Institute of Criminology responded to this use of its statistics. In a press release headlined "Misuse of rape statistics by anti-pornography campaigners", the Australian Institute of Criminology says:
The Australian Institute of Criminology disagrees with the interpretations of trends in rape given by the ACT Citizens against Pornography and their advertisements. The advertisement quoted Institute statistics taken from a publication of the National Committee on Violence -
a publication that has been referred to on numerous occasions -
showing rapes, or reported rapes, increasing dramatically since the early 1970s.
While the figures used in the graph are quite correct the advertisement has ignored the fully
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .