Page 3422 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 September 1991
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I believe that you have to modify any proposal that people do as they wish within the privacy of their own homes by the principle that people's right to do those things should affect nobody else. My concern particularly is about the impact of X-rated videos on children.
Mr Berry: But it is illegal.
MR HUMPHRIES: It may well be illegal; but it does not stop the fact that there is direct and consistent evidence of involvement by young people, by children, sometimes very young children, in X-rated videos.
The South Australian Council for Children's Film and Television conducted a study which found that many young people under the age of 18 are gaining regular access to explicit material in the form of R-rated and X-rated videos. The evidence does not come from a crackpot organisation; it comes from a reputable organisation in this area. The evidence is clear, and it need not be surprising to anybody who has children or who has a video machine. How old does a child need to be to pick up a video and operate it, in today's world? I have seen children of three or four years of age operate video machines.
Mr Jensen: I can't.
MR HUMPHRIES: That says something about members who have spoken, but I will not draw that point out. The fact is that if videos are freely available, if they are available in places where children may have access to them - I am talking particularly of some people's homes; regrettably, that is true - it is quite possible for children to pick up those videos and view them.
Unlike, for example, picking up a bottle of whisky - I think Mrs Grassby made some reference to drinking being a problem as well - viewing a single explicit pornographic video may do permanent damage to a child which might not occur by consuming half a bottle of whisky. I am obviously concerned that we do not make this debate one about wowserism. I am not a wowser.
Mr Moore: That is exactly what it is.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is what those opposite are saying - that it is a debate by wowsers. I do not accept that. It is not a debate about censorship, because everybody in this chamber agrees with censorship. Every one of us censors and supports censorship of something. I have not seen any evidence on the part of this Government that they would support the legalisation of violent erotica, for example, or child pornography or bestiality or whatever. Those things are, under the regime proposed and supported by this Government, to be censored.
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