Page 936 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 30 March 1993
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This report gives a recommendation for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, and indeed they need protection from violence. If we look at the report of the National Committee on Violence, Violence : Directions for Australia, on page 37 they say:
At the community forum held in Brisbane, the Committee was addressed by Ms Judy Atkinson, Director of the Office of Aboriginal Women in Queensland. She reported that domestic violence affects 90 per cent of Aboriginal families living in trust areas of Queensland, and that more women have died as a result of violent assault in one Queensland community alone than all the custodial deaths occurring in the State currently under review by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The anecdotes which Ms Atkinson related are horrific:
young boys in one community are said to be selling their younger sisters to older boys to pay gambling debts or to buy cans of beer. Young girls from eight years upwards are being sexually misused by adult men (white and black) in return for beer.
Not only are young men raping older women but old men are abusing young girls. In some cases, this abuse is so serious as to require surgical treatment.
A tragic case; and if you read on in this report Violence : Directions for Australia, you will find no reference whatsoever to the reason Judy Atkinson gave for the problem. She said that it was X-rated pornographic videos being introduced into Aboriginal communities. One could well ask: Why did the National Committee on Violence include the problems Atkinson listed but fail to include the reason she gave, from her practical experience?
Mr Connolly: Probably because they did not accept the reason. They disagreed with her.
MR STEVENSON: Mr Connolly says that it is probably because they did not accept the reason. That is one thought, and I imagine that there would also be people who say that they do not accept the reasons the US Attorney-General's Commission on Pornography found, namely:
Thus, we conclude that substantial exposure to materials of this type bears some causal relationship to the level of sexual violence, sexual coercion, or unwanted sexual aggression in the population so exposed.
What were they talking about? A category of non-violent materials depicting degradation, domination, subordination or humiliation - a perfect category for X-rated video pornography. (Extension of time granted)
The 1988 Joint Select Committee on Video Materials report showed a similar causal relationship. Yet the Attorney-General says, "Perhaps the National Committee on Violence did not believe Judy Atkinson". I tend to differ. I think there was another reason why they left out the reason for the horrendous effects in Aboriginal communities, and it has to do with ideology, not with practicality or concern for women.
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