Page 2533 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 1991
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MR STEVENSON: I cannot speak to them if I do not have them.
Mr Collaery: Mr Speaker, I move that the Clerk make them available to him for reference, they having been tabled.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Stevenson, I will grant you 15 minutes from now.
MR STEVENSON (3.23): For at least the last 10 years, royal commissions and other inquiries by Federal and State authorities have identified networks of influence and connections between the X-rated video industry and organised crime, both here and overseas.
In this Assembly on 16 April I said that, although Royal Commissioner Costigan had named four leaders of Australia's largest porn video group - namely, Gerald Gold, Joseph David Shellim, Frederick Shellim and Alexander Gajic - as eastern States organised crime figures, authorities have failed to take effective action to close down their activities. The question remains: Why have politicians repeatedly failed to instigate the necessary action?
False reports, claiming that the evidence that I presented connecting organised crime and X-rated video pornography is invalid, have been spread to MLAs and others by those who have an interest in the failure of the Bill. The reality of the situation is that, as a result of my statements, senior Victorian police officers came to the ACT, interviewed me and commenced a major investigation which is ongoing. In addition, Gerald Gold was recently interviewed by Federal Police investigating an international drug importation racket. Gold admitted his association with a number of people known to State and Federal police forces as being connected to the vice and drug trade. That investigation is also continuing.
The Federal Labor Government spends hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars on the effects of, or in trying to prevent, violence against women, child sexual abuse and discrimination against women, all of which are strongly influenced by X-rated video pornography. But in total disregard of these facts the Federal Labor Government has repeatedly refused either to introduce the national ban on X-rated videos requested by Australia's senior law makers, the Attorneys-General, or to bring the ACT in line with the Australian States when it had the opportunity.
Yesterday on page 3 of the Canberra Times the ACT ALP Attorney-General is quoted as saying that he cannot rule out the fact that I am accurate in saying that organised crime and the X-rated video industry in Canberra go hand in hand. Nevertheless, the members of the ACT Labor Party intend to vote against banning X-rated videos and thus allow this crime-ridden industry to operate in the ACT and distribute porn videos to all States in Australia where they are illegal.
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