Page 677 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 8 March 2005
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The legislation also has a transitional measure in it that minimises inconvenience to business. One of the things that I note this government has done which other governments in the past, regardless of colour, seem to forget is that, when you impose a regime on business, what can happen is that the businesses have that stock on their shelves. If they cannot shift that stock they have an instant loss, and, if they make a claim for compensation, in 100 per cent of cases that claim is rejected. So I note the transitional measures in this legislation that protect them. Mr Speaker, you might recall that, when we were talking about the restrictions on fireworks sales, one of the big issues was making sure that bona fide business people did not suffer because of the introduction of restrictive legislation regarding their businesses.
As I indicated a little earlier, there is always some concern that we might be breaching people’s civil liberties. We have here an absolutely classic example of how a piece of legislation going to the rights of parents over the governance, if you like, of their children has to be measured up against the Human Rights Act. In the past we argued about that but we do not have to argue that now. We have a Human Rights Act, and every piece of legislation has to be measured against it. If there is an infringement of somebody’s liberty, there has to be a very good explanation for it. In this case I do not think there has been.
I do not think this classification system should be regarded by the community as a rank act of censorship. It should not be regarded as a big brother attempt to tell parents what to do with regard to their children. This legislation provides guidance, in most cases, for parents in respect of the material their kids will be exposed to, with the slightly hard edge that, when we are talking about explicit and violent material, this society brooks no nonsense. We are just going to say no to it.
I think this is a very responsible piece of legislation. I take Dr Foskey’s point about being careful about liabilities, and the very different types of liabilities you can have. I also note that the scrutiny of bills committee did a very good job in looking at this piece of legislation, and I think that committee needs to be congratulated for that; I think it is a great move. I think that, at the end of the day, we have to make sure we have legislation that takes into account community concerns. The community is concerned about the depiction of violence.
Those computer games do nothing short of inciting kids to violence. I think we should do anything we can to stop that. Some of the explicit and not so explicit material portrays people in quite a demeaning manner. It depicts relationships between adults that are quite inappropriate and inexcusable. I think, whilst we have to be careful about banning those things outright, we need to make sure that the explanations contained on that material for the guidance of responsible people work. I believe this piece of legislation does just that, and I commend it to the Assembly.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Arts, Heritage and Indigenous Affairs) (10.52), in reply: Members will recall that I presented the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) (Enforcement) Amendment Bill on 9 December. The bill will amend the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) (Enforcement) Act 1995 to
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