Page 1244 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 24 April 1990
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material, clearly there has been a breach of the law, and I leave it to you to take the appropriate action, either as parents or as citizens. Secondly, the censorship rules which apply to X-rated videos say that there is no depiction of sexual violence, coercion or non-consent of any kind permitted in this classification. Again, if you know of cases in which that has not been complied with, clearly it is a breach of the law, and I leave you to take the appropriate action. It is not enough to keep raising anecdotal evidence to the contrary; you must take the appropriate action. The material which can be accommodated in the X-rated classification includes explicit depictions of sexual acts between consenting adults and mild, non-violent fetishes.
I think anybody listening to the debate this evening could readily understand that it has gone well beyond the terms of that specific classification of X-rated video. We need to be very clear on that. Secondly, the debate upon this Bill has involved an extremely misleading presentation of other information, particularly rape statistics put forward in recent advertisements. I have information from the Australian Institute of Criminology that makes it quite clear that those statistics have been used very strongly, and the institute is at great pains to indicate that it does not agree with that evidence that has been put forward, that it has been deliberately misleading.
Finally, I greatly resent the misrepresentation of the position of women in this entire debate. I resent it enormously, and I imagine that most thinking women would. At the introduction of his Bill Mr Stevenson gave us the edifying experience of reading out a long letter from one Linda Lovelace. I want it made quite clear that Linda Lovelace does not speak for me, any more than Robbie Swan would speak for Mr Stevenson. Mr Stevenson says that Linda Lovelace speaks for all women because she is a woman. Does Robbie Swan speak for all men because he is a man? What rubbish!
We have heard also from Mr Speaker on the experience of a 15-year-old girl whom he treated - in what capacity and with what qualification, heaven only knows. But quite clearly the circumstances that he outlined in relation to that 15-year-old girl involved breaches of the law - rape and exposing that child to X-rated video material, which is against the law. Did he take the appropriate legal action on those matters? I suspect the answer is no.
I have been particularly targeted in this debate because I am a woman, and people have appealed to me particularly on the ground that pornography is degrading for women. It is my view that pornography, including X-rated videos, degrades the whole of humankind. It degrades men as well as women. But I would like to ask where, in the debate on women's equality, have these people been who are so concerned with women? Where were they in the debate for women's equal pay? Where were they in the debate on
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