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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (18 April) . . Page.. 1112 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

The work that we have done with futsal and with FIFA - the international association for soccer in the world - to improve the profile of our city is very important; but a lot still needs to be done, and this Government will be doing everything in our power to achieve that, particularly over the next 12 months. We have been told, and I am sure that it goes without saying, that as soon as the Atlanta Olympics are over Olympic nations right around the world will be looking towards Sydney, looking to where their teams will train, and coming out to Australia to have a look at the venues that are available. It is essential that we continue with the approach that we have taken and that over the next 12 months we do everything in our power to encourage every one of those delegations that come to Australia to come to Canberra. I am sure that if they come here they will realise that we have the best sporting facilities in Australia, the best accommodation and certainly the best environment.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Debate resumed from 27 March 1996, on motion by Mr Humphries:

That the Assembly takes note of the papers.

MR MOORE (4.21): Mr Speaker, this has been an interesting issue for this Assembly. In fact, from the very beginning of the Assembly the issue of censorship has been debated with some heat. You may remember that under Mr Kaine's Alliance Government there was an attempt to remove X-rated videos from the Territory by legislation. That was not able to be achieved because it was the majority view of the Assembly that they remain. Mr Kaine's Government, and Mr Duby, as I recall, had the dubious honour of then ensuring that there was such a heavy taxation on those videos that the businesses wound up going to the Northern Territory. Certainly, most of the businesses did, while they remained technically legal in the Australian Capital Territory.

Censorship issues in some ways are the same sorts of issues that arise when we deal with things like paintball. A decision is made generally on balance. The decision is usually made in terms of the extent to which we believe that harm is going to occur in society compared to the right of individual adults to do what they wish in private. Of course, Mr Speaker, there will always be some people who believe that they should dictate to others what they should do in the privacy of their own homes. Those of us who are liberals believe that we should allow people the freedom to make this sort of decision themselves. That does not stop us putting some forms of protection in place for others, which is why the X-rated industry, like the prostitution industry in the Australian Capital Territory, has restrictions on it that largely mean that such trading is done as far as possible away from residential areas.

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