Page 5052 - Week 16 - Wednesday, 27 November 1991
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If it is the wish of the Assembly to ban X-rated videos, it should do so. We have debated that ad infinitum. If we are proposing this purely to the X-rated video approach, it is a real cop-out. It is saying, "I really want to ban them, but I will not vote to ban them". In that case it is really deserving of some contempt because it is a sort of attempt to curry favour with two lobbies at the same time, to pretend that you are a civil libertarian while pandering to a sector which wishes to ban that particular industry which the Assembly has voted on.
Our objection in principle remains. What is lawful or not lawful in this Territory ought to be clearly specified in the law of this Territory; it ought not to depend on the laws beyond our borders. For that reason, while we do not oppose Mr Collaery's first proposal to make the possession of child pornography an offence within this Territory - I think that is something where there would be general support throughout the chamber because there is general abhorrence of child pornography - we cannot support the second proposal to create this omnibus offence, dependent upon the state of the law beyond our borders.
MR STEFANIAK (11.57): Mr Collaery's Bill came in on 16 October with a series of Bills. I sent them off to a number of people, including Ken Crispin, QC, a very learned criminal lawyer with heaps of experience as a defence counsel and more recently as Director of Public Prosecutions. He has provided me with an advice, and I understand that Mr Connolly and Mr Collaery have the same advice.
After looking at Mr Collaery's original Bill, whilst I had a considerable amount of sympathy for his proposed new section 92NB, I wondered, in relation to clauses 4, 5 and 6: What on earth is he doing? I had a look through the Crimes Act. Those clauses, if they were left in, would merely confuse the situation. In some cases they would provide a maximum penalty which would be too low in the circumstances and would be quite different from what has been in the Crimes Act before. Really, when one looks at all the provisions, they would not be of any great assistance to the criminal law and probably would not really do what Mr Collaery hoped they would do. Therefore, I was delighted to see Mr Collaery today circulate some amendments, and Mr Jensen a further amendment, which I think make the task of looking at this Bill a hell of a lot simpler.
Mr Crispin, in his detailed, very learned and sensible advice on this Bill, notes the various problems with clauses 4, 5 and 6 which, quite sensibly, are to be deleted by Mr Collaery. Mr Connolly raised a point, though, in relation to one proposed amendment about transmitting articles interstate. Effectively, we are talking about X-rated articles. Mr Crispin, at page 4 of his advice to me, says this:
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