Page 3441 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 September 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I was astounded to see that at the beginning of the film there was a high-sounding moral injunction enjoining everyone to have protected sex, and there was a graphic demonstration of the use of a condom. The rest of the movie depicted totally unprotected multiple sex situations. I must say that I find that double entente akin to some of the arguments today. People are - excuse this dreadful pun - breastfeeding on the issue, but they are not coming up with a solution. I want to come up with a solution because I believe that there is an amount of this material which should be censored out of our community.
To continue the overview, some 75 per cent of the ACT distribution of X-rated videos and advertising material is by mail order. Under our Constitution, the mail system is exclusively a Commonwealth function. As Attorney, I constantly received complaints from individuals offended by unsolicited sexually explicit advertising received in the mail by them or their children. On inquiry, some of it appeared to be nasty jokes by neighbours, friends, workmates and, in some surprising instances, members of the household who had not come clean with those who empty the mailbox. But that in itself is an exercise about our extended family relationships, as they are at the moment - or are not.
There is a specific offence under the Commonwealth Crimes Act of using the postal service to deal with mail which would offend a reasonable person. In my view, some of the mail would offend a reasonable person, and it is the shame of the Commonwealth that it has not moved there. It is shameful that in this Territory we bear so much of the odium of the failure of the Commonwealth censorship authorities to do something realistic about it. I will come back to that. There have been large-scale seizures in other States, and the origin of those products has not been brought back to the Territory.
I have always argued that the States are wallowing in hypocrisy; that there are identified filming spots, film locations, reproduction facilities - in a cinematographic sense - in the States, and that nothing much has been done about it. I have said a lot about it in the presence of police Ministers, Attorneys and censorship Ministers. I do not read of any prosecutions. Indeed, Western Australian politicians say that they ban even the possession of this material, but I know that the Western Australian Government was offered a list of 14,000 names of subscribers from that State, and they did not particularly want the list. Although that is an anecdotal statement and I am not privy to the exact details, I will bet that it is true.
The States are wallowing in hypocrisy, and some of us, particularly me, have had to wear an amount of pressure. I show members a poster from the Canberra Times of Tuesday, 24 April, which said to all Canberrans, "Collaery Key to Videoville". You can imagine how inaccurate that is.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .