Page 1243 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 24 April 1990
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literary merit; it was just garbage, but it sold and made money, and that is all they were interested in. That is the sort of industry that we are fostering in the ACT.
There are many times in our lives at which our individual desires have to make way for the greater good and the healthier functioning of society at large. In any event, if all the viewers of this material were thinking adults, my objections would not be so strong, but it is clear that many viewers are anything but thinking adults. How do we keep them out of the hands of those who are too young to be discerning or the mentally incompetent or those with a tendency towards perversion and violence? The evidence suggests that regular watching of pornographic material gives the watcher an unreal view of women and relationships with them. Women are seen as objects rather than equal members of society.
I cannot believe that there is a woman present tonight who does not wish that society provided greater equality and security and less exploitation for them. I have been made aware of situations in which women have been subjected, in their relationships, to persuasion and coercion to participate in acts which are portrayed in some porn videos but which they find abhorrent and degrading. Addiction to pornography has been a cause of too many marriage breakdowns.
This Bill before us tonight requires careful scrutiny in relation to a number of proposed amendments. Yet as a statement of intent and a measure to bring the ACT into line with the other States, despite its imperfections, I support it in principle.
MS FOLLETT (Leader of the Opposition) (9.14): We on the Labor team will be opposing, in principle, Mr Stevenson's Bill. We do so on three main grounds. Firstly, we support, in principle, freedom of speech. We support adults' rights to read and view whatever they wish. I think that is an extremely important freedom, but there has been an attempt tonight to sweep that under the carpet, to say that this is not a debate about censorship. Of course, it is, and it is ridiculous to pretend that it is not. It is an attempt to restrict the rights of adults to view what they wish, and we oppose that in principle.
Our second reason for opposing the Bill is that it is based on an entirely misleading and false representation of the facts. There has been, for instance, a repeated and deliberate confusion over exactly what X-rated videos are, and it has been repeated this evening in a number of speakers' comments.
I will again tell the Assembly just what is meant by an X-rated video; it is quite a specific category of publication. In the first place, it is available only to those who are 18 years and over. If you know of cases in which people under 18 have got hold of that sort of
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