Page 2054 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 5 June 1990
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situation is funny. Perhaps that is a condemnation of the values that those people hold. Moving the video distribution points around Canberra like pieces on a chess board will not solve the major problem, which is that the rest of the Australian States are being used as a sewer for pornographic materials against their will. I think it is important to highlight once again that all States in Australia have banned X-rated videos yet we did not even have the decency to ensure that such videos will not be spread throughout those States. Anything we do here to move them around may make some slight, insignificant difference to what happens in Canberra but, as I have mentioned, nothing will change in relation to mail-order videos.
What does this mean to Australians? Let us look at the original Australians, the Aboriginals. Judith Atkinson is a Brisbane based Aboriginal research consultant who was hired by the Government. After travelling extensively throughout Australia, researching the problems that befell Aboriginal communities, she came up with numerous cases throughout the country indicating the destructive impact on the Aboriginal people of pornographic videos, compounded by the problems of alcohol and alienation.
Among many cases she studied, she spoke of a six-year-old boy who watched a video that his drunken uncles were watching. He was totally traumatised and could not sleep. In another case, a worker at a Northern Territory Aboriginal women's shelter described how women were being raped with a stick after the men had watched porn videos. Another case was five years ago in a certain Northern Territory community that had been considered to be functioning well. It was selected by the Government as an example of perhaps the ideal Aboriginal community. Now that community has changed. Why has it changed? Because of pornographic videos. A white mechanic in the area has been hiring them out to the Aboriginal people.
The violence level against Aboriginal women caused by pornographic X-rated videos is now horrific. In another Aboriginal community, the women said that, since these pornographic videos started coming in, there had been more rape and more fighting. In north-west Western Australia - and once again I highlight the fact that this is Australia-wide and not a localised problem - Aboriginal people said that the videos were causing big problems. The men who were addicted to them did terrible, unspeakable things to the women. At a north Queensland community, once again promoted by the Commonwealth as one of the best, there has been a big increase in violence.
A five-year-old boy was internally injured after 10- and 11-year-old boys copied what they saw on a pornographic video. In another community, girls as young as eight were shown hard-core porn videos and made to perform in a similar manner. Levels of rape and other forms of violence have increased dramatically. Yet another Aboriginal
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