Page 1223 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 24 April 1990
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documented explanations given by the Institute publications and substituted others without substantiation. The Institute believes that the rise in reported sexual offences since the early 1970s has been overwhelmingly due to three factors, none of which are mentioned in the advertisement.
They are:
(1) The success of the women's movement in persuading both women and men that sexual offences are crimes of assault and ought to be treated as such by taking them to court.
(2) The dramatic change in legislation brought about by this change of attitude, which greatly increases scope of laws concerning sexual assaults and facilitates their pursuance through the courts.
(3) The demographic changes in Australia since the mid-1970s which have resulted in greatly increased numbers of people in their late teens and twenties, the ages at which people are most likely to commit sexual offences.
This is just another attempt to misuse the truth to mislead people. The more I looked for the evidence, the more I found that there was none that supported the anti-pornography campaign. This is verified by the writings of Dr Paul Wilson of the Institute of Criminology, who is a long-time opponent of prohibition.
Another tactic of Mr Stevenson and his anti-pornography campaigners is to present minority reports as if they were majority reports. They do that particularly with the National Committee on Violence publication, Violence, Directions for Australia. They read from and present some of the minority report at the back of the publication as though it were part of the majority report.
What will prohibition achieve? Prohibition will achieve very little except to increase usage, as I have argued in this Assembly before and I have no intention of doing so again. It will increase usage and it will allow the fanatics to feel that they achieved something to feel good about. However, we do have at our disposal the opportunity to attempt to minimise usage and not force our moral value judgments on other people. That is what this Bill is about; it is not about violence or pornography, it is an attempt to inflict, by legislation, a set of mores on other people.
What do we do about legislation under these circumstances? The dividing line, I believe, is about harm to others. Despite the fact that I have looked for it, I have seen no evidence of harm that I can validate that these X-rated non-violent erotica movies cause harm to other people. I do not need to have overwhelming evidence. I draw an
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