Page 2062 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 5 June 1990
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Mr Speaker, this legislation will provide a real incentive for the Government to ensure that the industry here is regulated. I want to make it perfectly clear that the industry here has been legal. Sometimes people talk about the Adult Video Industry Association and its members as if they were somehow criminals. They are not criminals and they have been complying with the letter of the law as it applies here in the ACT. They will continue to comply with the letter of the law as it applies here in the ACT with the passage of this legislation.
With the passage of this legislation, government representatives from the ACT will be able to face other government representatives from around this country, look them in the eye and say, "At least we're not hypocrites; at least we've accepted the facts, we've regulated the industry, we've been responsive to community concerns and we're doing something about it". We are not trying to ban products and thus we are not being total hypocrites. We intend to enforce this legislation. If people are discovered distributing, selling or hiring this material anywhere but in the restricted areas that the Attorney-General will promulgate in his regulations, the full force and penalty of the law will be invoked.
For that reason I endorse the Bill. I am amazed - absolutely flabbergasted, actually - that the Opposition and in particular the Labor Party will oppose this Bill. It flies in the face of all logic and all past performance. I endorse this Bill absolutely.
DR KINLOCH (9.04): This is a very difficult issue. I would like to commend a number of colleagues. I thought Mr Moore spoke very carefully and thoughtfully about the R-rated matter and, indeed, I am very sympathetic to what he said. I hope in due course we will be dealing with that. I am also very sympathetic to Mr Stevenson's views. We do not agree on everything, and, although I find it interesting that sometimes he turns out not to have represented the things he is said to have represented, I think we should honour his courage and independence in this matter, as Mr Duby has recognised.
On the particular matters he referred to, I would ask all members to note an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, 2 June. I find this one of the most extraordinary pieces of film criticism I have read. It is by Richard Neville. He talks about the film, "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover". The title of the article is "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and The Old Hippy" - a reference to Richard Neville.
Richard Neville of Oz was, of course, the great libertarian, the great defender of getting away from some older standards that used to apply in Australia - indeed, in the Australia I saw when I first arrived here. In this extraordinary article Richard Neville's approach is the reverse of his approach 30 years ago to various kinds of
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