Page 2301 - Week 08 - Thursday, 7 June 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR KAINE: I sat quietly for three and a half hours, Mr Wood, and you know it. Mr Stevenson first introduced the Publications Control (Amendment) Bill as a private member's Bill into the Assembly on 14 February, calling for X-rated videos to be banned. He spoke at length on the matter before it was adjourned. On 21 February, Mr Moore presented a second Bill, and that Bill proposed restricting the publishing of material involved in X-rated and R-rated movies to the areas of Hume, Fyshwick and Mitchell. This Bill was intended to minimise the availability of both categories of video material, and debate on that motion was further adjourned.
My colleague the Attorney-General then continued the debate and put forward the motion to further adjourn the matter to allow the Government sufficient time to properly research the issues entailed and to broaden the debate beyond the borders of the Australian Capital Territory - and it is not just an issue for us; it is an Australia-wide issue.
At this time Mr Moore also foreshadowed an amendment to the Bill which would grant the Attorney-General the power to move X-rated videos to Fyshwick. This second Bill was a compromise, intended to defeat the Stevenson Bill. The debate resumed on 24 April, and I recall commenting at the time that the debate had been lengthy and that it had been debated from a position of emotion and in some cases from a position of heat.
Mr Stevenson has debated the issue from both positions, and I believe it is from the same position that he has put forward this motion today. The Bill to ban X-rated videos was defeated. That was the expression of the will of the Assembly and it should have been the end of the issue. I would also point out that Mr Stevenson and I voted on the same side on that particular issue.
Now he attacks me over this X-rated issue and proposes a motion of no confidence. He has shown himself to be single-minded and obsessed about this issue. Sadly, I do not believe that he has the good of the public in his mind at all at this time, but more the good of his own publicity. If there were no publicity, I submit that this motion would never have been put on the table.
But, again, I do not really take issue with Mr Stevenson, because he is obsessed with it and he believes that he is operating from a position of honesty. Again, I challenge the Labor Party. It is the members of that party who equivocate, who change position, who hide from public debate and who now attempt to present themselves as cleaner than clean - the highly moral Labor Party of today.
Six months ago, Mr Speaker, the then Labor Government presented its own X-rated video tax Bill, but on Tuesday, two days ago, when this Government's tax Bill was debated, the entire Labor Party opted out of the debate. Labor members absented themselves during the entire debate and
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .