Page 3434 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 September 1991
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things and ask around - I have done it at Kings Cross, just to test this - you will find that without any difficulty you can put your hand not just on an X-rated movie but on a movie that also has violence associated with sex.
If you go back to the philosophy Mr Connolly has presented - that you draw the censorship line following the theories of John Stuart Mill on harm to others - then that is an appropriate line to draw. If we send these movies underground, we will achieve exactly the opposite of what Mr Stevenson says that he is trying to achieve. In fact, all the arguments Mr Stevenson has presented are very strong arguments for doing what we have already done to restrict access to X-rated movies, but not to prohibit them.
This Bill makes the situation worse, and that is something we must not do. The effect of prohibition has always been to send things underground and make them worse. By avoiding prohibition but advocating restriction, as has been the case, we can have some control over what is in these movies. The situation that currently applies, of course, is that, because of the mail-order methodology they use, the people who sell these movies have huge lists of names - I understand, some 300,000 or more throughout Australia. They are not going to throw those lists away.
If we send this industry underground, instead of being in a position where we can have some impact on what goes into those movies we will lose control altogether and the situation will be worse. The only benefit will be that Mr Stevenson will get some advantage with a small percentage of redneck voters that are supporting him and supporting this move.
There is simply not sufficient evidence to say that non-violent erotica is harmful. The evidence that Mr Stevenson has presented to this Assembly up until now and that he has presented publicly almost always has referred not to non-violent erotica but to erotica in other parts of the world where they do not have non-violent classifications. You cannot extrapolate from that evidence to the ACT or to Australia. You cannot, anyway, extrapolate from that evidence, because it is always about a statistical analysis of an increase in rape compared to availability of erotica.
What has happened is that, at the same time as that erotica has been available, people's attitudes have been changing. Women now feel empowered enough to say, "Yes, I was raped. That person did it. I am reporting it". Just last week in Tasmania a husband was found guilty of raping his wife. No-one has the prerogative to carry out a violent action on somebody else, particularly a sexually violent action. We all agree on that.
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