Page 1751 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 18 August 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
time, a condition from which, thankfully, women do not suffer. They may suffer from a lot of other conditions, but not that one. Seeing women, even women with clothes on, in very compromising positions, indicating to the reader or to the person seeing the magazine that those women are fairly desperate, cannot be giving a positive message to the community. It cannot be positive, to give people and children the right or proper attitude to women. The clear message that these photographs send out is that women are always "after a bit", even if they do not admit it; if you have to use a bit of force, so be it.
I think everybody in the Assembly today, Madam Speaker, is aware that violence against women is a continuing problem and a growing problem and that we must do everything possible to stop the growth in this area. If it means putting magazines behind blinder racks, so be it. Even if there is only a chance of that approach working, it is worth giving it a go. This is the message, though, that we are giving not just to adults like everybody here, but also to our children in newsagencies, service stations and wherever magazines are sold. How can we possibly expect these children, very young children in many cases, to grow up with a positive attitude to women? How can we expect our young men to respect women when the clear message is quite the opposite? If our young men have no respect for women, domestic violence and rape are so much easier. If there is no respect, who cares? It is okay. How can we expect our young women to come to grips with their own sexuality in an appropriate and positive way, to have a good sense of self and where they are up to with their lives, if every time they go into a newsagency to buy a newspaper they see women portrayed in a degrading sexual fashion? The signals, I say again, are all wrong.
The problem, as I see it, is very much a matter of what we expose our young people, our children, to at a time when they are forming their attitudes and beliefs. It is really a matter of balance. We must give our young people an opportunity to see what the world is all about, but at the same time we must not constantly expose them to such material. This is not an issue of censorship; it is an issue of not exposing young people, while they are forming their belief structure, to material which cannot but give them the wrong impression of women. I think that we all believe - and I am much kinder than Mr Connolly - in equality and equal opportunity for everyone in our society; but we continue to allow women to be depicted and to be used, shall I say, in positions or in ways that are totally inappropriate, and not just at Fyshwick or at Mitchell or where people actually have to make an effort to go out and have a look. I totally accept that position, but to allow this sort of thing to happen in our local shopping centres cannot but upset all of the efforts that we are making as a society to have real equal opportunity and equality. I think we all should remember the Canberra-bashing analogy. If people see and hear something often enough, unfortunately a large percentage of those people will believe it.
Mr Humphries and Ms Szuty have rightly raised a number of the issues and it would be wrong of me to raise them again. They have adequately put the position that legislation is possible. Mr Connolly has often suggested that it is not the appropriate way to go, but we see from the experiences in other States that it can work if that is what is required. I think the position in New South Wales is very interesting. If Dr Goldsmith's legislation goes through in New South Wales we will have the usual situation where women in Queanbeyan are treated in a different way from women in Canberra. That would be totally unacceptable.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .