Page 2050 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 5 June 1990
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Bill will give the Executive power to make regulations to restrict X classified material to specified areas of Canberra. Those areas are not specified.
Mr Speaker, we may accept that the Government intends to nominate Fyshwick, Hume and Mitchell - I do not accept it - but the Bill makes it possible for the Government to nominate any area in Canberra that it likes, or more precisely that it dislikes. It does not do what Mr Collaery says it does, and his introductory speech is totally at odds with the explanatory memorandum for this Bill. I find that a reprehensible situation. Mr Collaery's speech does not give one justification for it, not one reason why this restriction should be introduced. It is an astonishing condemnation of this Government that it should not even bother to explain why it is introducing a Bill. So we are left to speculate about what the Bill is designed to accomplish.
Perhaps with the Assembly having decided that X-rated videos should be available in the ACT, the Government now has two bob each way by thinking that out of sight will be out of mind. That is its ostrich mentality - if you cannot see it then it does not exist. As I said, there has been no argument whatsoever put forward for that provision in this Bill.
On this side we oppose the provision for several reasons. First, we fail to see why, if this material is legally available, it should be less available to some adults than it is to others. Does the Government think that the people who work in Fyshwick, Hume and Mitchell, or who live nearby, are more interested in this material or have a greater need to see it? Or does it believe that only people who own a car should be able to go to a video shop and obtain this material? We may never know the answer. Certainly none of them have addressed those questions.
The second reason for objecting to this provision is that it is unfair and discriminatory to the many small businesses outside the light industrial areas which carry a small stock of these videos. There have been no reported cases of the existing law being broken. These shops have not provided videos to minors, and we have yet to hear about any prosecution relating to the display in these premises. Indeed, that very concern, albeit in relation to R material, was raised by Mr Collaery in opposing Mr Moore's Bill on this same subject just over two months ago. I would have thought that the Liberals and the Residents Rally would have had more consideration for the small businesses which they were attacking with this unexplained move. "Have you consulted with them?", I would like to ask. You have not consulted with anybody else.
Mr Speaker, the final point which needs to be made about this Bill is that it represents yet another astonishing turnaround by the Government. Mr Moore introduced a Bill several months ago to restrict the sale of these videos to
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