Page 1271 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 24 April 1990
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MR KAINE: Keep talking, Mr Moore. You have had your say, and I listened very carefully to what you had to say; I did not interrupt, and I gave you 20 minutes. You are not prepared to listen to me; you have to talk me down. Another part of the ploy is to talk down your opponent if you cannot win by point of argument.
Mr Moore: What are you doing?
MR KAINE: I am making my speech, in the same way as you made yours. I happen to believe that it is the responsibility of organisations and institutions like this to listen to the community, to determine what standards it wants adopted. I have listened fairly carefully, I think, over a long period to the debate inside and outside this house. I think I have deduced the standard that our community wants; I am going to vote accordingly, and I hope you all do the same.
One thing that has come out of this debate has been good, and I think we, in the Government, should note it because if this Bill is voted down this Government has an obligation to pursue some of the things that have come out in debate. I refer to things like those that my colleague Carmel Maher brought forward. Her speech was a very important contribution to the debate - much more than most of what most other people said - because she was constructive. She does not believe in banning - that is a perfectly legitimate point of view - but she said that there are things that need to be done. She took the trouble to tell us what they were. Some others, who spent a lot of time haranguing us, might think a little about that.
There is one other thing that I would like people to keep in mind. There was some debate earlier in the evening, which tapered out later, about the objectionable detail of Mr Stevenson's Bill. There is certainly some objectionable detail there. Now we are talking about a debate in principle on this Bill. The content of this Bill is irrelevant; you either vote for the principle of banning this material or you vote against banning it.
The detail of this Bill is irrelevant because if the Bill is supported in principle we have another opportunity to tear it apart, pull it to pieces, throw out the detail that we do not like, amend it and put in detail that we do like; but that is another debate. What we are debating now and what we are about to vote on is the question in principle of whether we agree with banning X-rated videos. Members should not allow themselves to be confused or have their thinking distorted by some of the detail in this Bill which they may not like. There will come a time later for them to remove that.
I said before that I believe I have assessed the will of this community and what it wants done on this issue. My
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