Page 3445 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 September 1991
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What the States have banned, and what I seek to ban with this Bill, is X-rated videos. Why do we seek to ban X-rated videos? Because they show bondage and they portray child pornography. They may not use children, but they show young-looking women dressed up as children. They show flagellation; they show various toilet acts; they show slavery, incest, obscene phone calls, voyeurism. They portray and promote casual sex and adultery.
In 1988, every Attorney-General called for a ban on X-rated videos. The then Federal Attorney-General, Lionel Bowen, added his voice to the call for a ban. The Federal Labor Party in 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 at least to bring the ACT into line with the ban in every Australian State. In every State in Australia it is illegal to sell, hire and distribute X-rated videos. This includes all governments controlled by the Labor Party. Only in Canberra and the Northern Territory is this pornography allowed.
The Northern Territory Government has in the past indicated that they do not want the Northern Territory to take over Canberra's role as the porn capital of Australia. Last month, Denis Collins, an Independent member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, introduced a Bill to ban X-rated videos. Criminals running the porn trade will have little success in trying to set up in the Northern Territory once their operations are banned in the ACT.
Some members have said today that X-rated video pornography does not increase rape and violence. Let us look at the evidence. The two most recent worldwide investigations into the effects of pornography were in 1986 and 1988. In 1986 the US Attorney-General's Commission on Pornography found that X-rated video-type materials can result in people committing more acts of sexual violence and sexual coercion in a population so exposed. In Australia in 1988, the Commonwealth's Senate Select Committee on Video Materials was formed. That committee's majority report also identified the connection between X-rated videos and violence. The committee called for a ban on X-rated videos.
Dr Melville Anshell, who did a major study of sex offenders, listed four effects of pornography: The first was an addiction effect; the second was an escalation effect - those who watch it need more and more extreme pornography; the third was the desensitisation effect - people become desensitised to the things shown; and the fourth was the increased tendency to act out sexually that which is seen in the pornography. This simply validates what we all know: What we see influences what we do. That is why hundreds of millions of dollars a year is spent in Australia on television advertising.
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