Page 181 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 1991
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pornography includes dehumanization, sexual exploitation, forced sex, forced prostitution, physical injury, and social and sexual terrorism and inferiority presented as entertainment. The bigotry and contempt it promotes, with the acts of aggression it fosters, diminish opportunities for equality of rights in employment, education, property, public accommodations and public services; create public and private harassment, persecution and denigration; promote injury and degradation such as rape, battery, child sexual abuse, and prostitution and inhibit just enforcement of laws against these acts; contribute significantly to restricting women in particular from full exercise of citizenship and participation in public life, including in neighbourhoods; damage relations between the sexes; and undermine women's equal exercise of rights to speech and action, guaranteed to all citizens under the Constitution ... of the United States.".
So, we need to look at what we are banning, when we look at X-rated videos. We are banning the earlier so-called rights of porn pushers to degrade all of us. We are banning their rights to make money, to profit, to gain "loot from lust", as the Chief Minister put it so well, from this activity. But let me make a point that few people understand. If you go to any State in Australia, and go to a video shop, in many of them you will be surprised, perhaps, to find videos on shelves with the same titles as you find in the porn shops in Canberra, and the same pictures are on the front.
You say, "Well, how could that be if they are banned in every State in Australia?". Indeed, they are banned in every State in Australia, but the difference is the rating. The rating on those videos that you would recognise if you have looked at any is an R rating. So, what is the difference? The difference is that they have cut out the defecation; they have cut out the urination; they have cut out the whipping; they have cut out the voyeurism; they have cut out the genitalia; and they have cut out the schoolgirl activities and other activities.
So, are we preventing people from looking at that which they want in the broader scope? No. Are we preventing the degradation? Are we preventing the promotion of activities that do no individuals any good whatsoever? Yes, we are. I would ask members in this house to understand that we have the responsibility, have the opportunity and have the obligation to ban X-rated videos in the ACT, because it is not just the ACT, as we well know. The wider problem is that they are distributed throughout Australia.
The will of the people requires that we ban X-rated videos. We have surveyed in Canberra, and the majority of people want their sale, hire and distribution banned. We well
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