Page 1008 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 26 July 1989
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I agree with Mr Stefaniak in his concerns about violence and violent films. People were making a joke before of my holding up the cover of this magazine, but I will do it now for the sake of members. I think it is absolutely outrageous. I will show it. It is an advertisement for some horror movie which has an M rating and which is available to 15-year-old children. That that should be shown and should be freely available in the shops in the ACT and, for that matter, in Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane, I think, is outrageous. Would anyone suggest that this sort of thing should be allowed? I note this is merely an M rating; God knows what the R-rated ones have in them!
Ms Follett: Holiday specials for school children.
MR DUBY: Yes, a holiday special for school children. I think it is disgusting that that sort of thing is allowed to be sold and to be viewed by 15-year-old children. As I said, I support the original Bill and I would urge members to reject Mr Stefaniak's amendment at this stage. The fact remains that in the budget papers introduced only yesterday, strangely enough - I know it is hard to link a matter of what some people regard as a moral issue with that of dollars and cents - it is estimated that the distribution from the ACT of X-rated material, material which the rest of Australia wants to put under the bed, so to speak, and pretend that it does not exist, will earn this Territory in the order of $2m in this financial year.
We have a monopoly on that quite legal and quite moral, I believe, trade within Australia. To pass this amendment would be, in effect, to my way of thinking, first of all, moral hypocrisy, and it would be economic lunacy. So I speak against the amendment.
MR MOORE (5.16): I believe what we have heard from Mr Stefaniak is the sort of confusion that has been clouding this style of argument for some time. What is becoming very clear here is that members of this Assembly certainly oppose excessive violence being readily available. What Mr Stefaniak has then done is confused that opposition with whether or not they oppose erotica.
I believe that large numbers of people throughout Canberra have no objection to erotica, to things sexual. Probably quite a large number of them actually enjoy them. Throughout Australia people not only enjoy the practice, but they also enjoy clearly watching these things on video, otherwise that video industry would not exist.
I am taken back to my pre-university days when I heard so many people talking about a novel called Lady Chatterley's Lover. Maybe they talked about it a lot because they were not allowed to read it. I was fortunate enough to be compelled to study Lady Chatterley's Lover in my first year of university and to understand some of the joys of D.H.
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