Page 2049 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 5 June 1990
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provides that sexually explicit advertising material must be double-enveloped and bear a warning is also sensible. The Labor Party also accepts that clause 6 of this Bill is designed to rectify an anomaly in the original Publications Control Act whereby a videotape containing a film classified as G, PG, or M would be illegal if it also contained a trailer advertising any other video, regardless of classification.
We believe that it is sensible to provide that a video may advertise another film of the same or lower classification. Of course, Mr Collaery failed in either his speech or the explanatory memorandum to indicate why an X-rated video should only be allowed to advertise other X-rated products and not those with lower classifications. While this provision was included in the original Act, it appears to me that we deserve some explanation of the policy objective of that restriction.
But the real problem with the Bill, and the reason why we oppose it, is clause 4. That clause provides that X-rated films or videos will not be available except on premises in prescribed areas. It also provides that X-rated material shall not be provided to a person without proof of age or reasonable grounds for believing that the person is over 18. It is only the first of those provisions which creates the problem.
The Labor Party strongly supports the idea that X-rated material should be housed separately in retail outlets so that minors will not have access to it and so that adults who might be affronted by the material will not encounter it unless they deliberately choose to do so. It is possible that the existing law may need some tightening up or that we may need to look at the policing of the existing system. Indeed, there may also be a case for extending the restrictions on display to include the R classification. But there is absolutely no logic behind the provision which Mr Collaery is introducing - far from it, in fact.
Mr Collaery's introductory speech was one of the most astonishing displays of double standards that we have so far seen from the man - and that is saying a lot. For a start, his speech was quite simply wrong about the provisions contained in the Bill, and I believe that he has misled the Assembly. He said, and I will quote from his speech:
The Publications Control (Amendment Bill) 1990 [No. 3] introduces the following measures: restriction of the sale and distribution of X-rated videos to the industrial areas of Canberra - Fyshwick, Hume and Mitchell.
That statement is not true. When you look at clause 4 or at the explanatory memorandum you see quite clearly that it provides that an X-rated film shall not be published otherwise than in a prescribed area. In other words, the
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