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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 4578 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Finally, the Government amendments facilitate the payment of a licence fee in quarterly instalments where a licence is renewed. New licensees will be liable to pay their annual fee up front. However, where a licence is renewed, the licensee may pay in quarterly instalments. Those who are presently licensed will therefore take the benefit of the option of making quarterly payments of their fees. These arrangements are intended to assist those who are already in the X video industry, and who will be subject to the greatly increased licence fee of $10,000 for a licence to sell from one premises, with higher fees applying where more than one premises is licensed or the licence also covers copying. New entrants to the industry will know that they face the payment of their fees up front for the first year. Where fees are paid by instalment, failure to pay by the due date will result in suspension of the licence and, where an instalment is not paid within 30 days of the due date, the licence will be cancelled. I commend these amendments to the Assembly.

MS FOLLETT (10.53): The Opposition will be supporting these amendments, which deal basically with three issues. First of all, they deal with the licensing of people who are in the business of copying X films. I understand that within the X-rated industry in the ACT there are quite a number of such businesses. In fact, if you put any credence in the name of the business that took our previous regime to the High Court, Capital Duplicators, it is quite clear that they were also in the business of copying X films and that there is a substantial amount of business done in the ACT by way of copying of X films and subsequently selling them elsewhere.

The amendments also deal with another very necessary aspect of any regulatory regime, and that is the unclassified or refused classification material. Mr Speaker, these two kinds of material are in fact illegal products. It seems to me entirely appropriate that in the ACT we should not allow anybody to carry on a business which profits from the handling of illegal products. If we were, for instance, to come across a heroin operation in the ACT and the operator were to say, "We are just packaging it and sending it out of the ACT", I do not think we would say, "That is all right". It is quite clearly an illegal product and it would not be acceptable for them to be undertaking that kind of business and profiting by it. Material which has been refused classification - that is, it does not meet the guidelines of the Commonwealth censorship scheme, whether for reasons of violence, the degree of pornography, the involvement of children or whatever - is a very serious type of material which is banned. Material which is unclassified - that is, it has not been through the censorship regime and may contain material which is illegal - is also not acceptable. So it seems to me entirely reasonable that we prohibit the copying of such material and prohibit anybody from carrying on such a business in the ACT.

The final aspect of these amendments, the payment of licence fees by instalment, seems to me to be reasonable, particularly when it applies to businesses which are already in existence. I think it is probably quite sensible to require new businesses to pay the full fee up front, especially if you want to discourage fly-by-nighters or people who want to make a very short term killing in the ACT. I do not think that is the kind of industry we want to encourage here. The licence instalment plan seems to me to be reasonable, but I know that the Revenue Office will want to keep that under pretty close monitoring to make sure that it is working the way that the legislation intends it to work and that the revenue which the Government expects to gain from this legislation is in fact being achieved.

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