Page 2787 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 21 November 1989
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Kutchinsky studied the same situation in West Germany in 1973. He found that between 1973 and 1980 the total number of sex crimes known to the police in the Federal Republic decreased by 11 per cent during a period when the number of all crimes increased by a massive 50 per cent.
He said further:
... it is interesting to observe that in Queensland where censorship has been ruthlessly imposed on sexual material the rate of rape has always been far higher than in the ACT, the home of "X" rated videos.
So this, Mr Speaker, is the sort of research material undertaken by a very responsible and very highly regarded academic, in the form of Dr Wilson from the Australian Institute of Criminology. It cannot be ignored.
Let me go now to some of the remarks that were made by Dr Kinloch. I think that Dr Kinloch's remarks are particularly important and relevant to this discussion because he is not only an expert on films but he has presented himself on other occasions as an expert on morality as well. Of course, Dr Kinloch is probably well qualified, because I venture to suggest that he has probably seen more X-rated films than the rest of the members put together. I understand that the old rogue has been on the mailing list of all the new releases of the X-rated videos.
MR SPEAKER: There is a point of order, Minister.
Dr Kinloch: It just seems to me that this is getting unduly personal, Mr Speaker.
MR WHALAN: What I was going to say, Mr Speaker, was that, if it is true - and I do not think that Dr Kinloch would deny this - that Dr Kinloch has, in fact, seen many X-rated videos, have they affected him? Any objective observer would have to come to the conclusion that there has been no obvious ill effect on Dr Kinloch. Clearly, he is not a rapist or a child molester, nor does he do whatever other antisocial things people are driven to, or supposedly driven to, as a result of participating in the observation of pornography on film. It clearly has not affected Dr Kinloch in that way. I think that he is a fine, upstanding citizen, and it is of value in this debate to demonstrate that people are not affected, as Dr Wilson clearly demonstrated.
Dr Kinloch did draw attention to the fact that there is a thriving mail-order business here in the ACT. Of course, that is what makes this particular legislation for a tax on X-rated videos so attractive to the Government in the circumstances which we face at the moment in relation to the Commonwealth Government. The Commonwealth Government
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