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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 2926 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

As far as the Bill before us is concerned, it does appear that appropriate checks and balances are in place, as there are guidelines to be issued under which the director must operate. I note that these guidelines under which the director of the Classification Board must operate are currently being discussed at the Commonwealth, State and Territory level in order to develop a consistent approach across all jurisdictions.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (11.24), in reply: Mr Speaker, I want to thank members of the Opposition and the crossbenches for their support for the legislation. It is housekeeping legislation, in a sense. Perhaps this emerged only because of the fact that it struck me as odd when I encountered this problem. Although the censor and the Censorship Board were classifying material, I was being asked, as ACT Minister responsible for censorship, to approve the showing of films in the ACT that had not been classified, generally films from overseas. It seemed strange to me that the judgment in these things was vested in a board which provided, for the most part, that function across the whole of Australia, but in respect of each jurisdiction there was a certain function left to a particular Minister. I found myself poring over the synopses of films that were proposed to be shown at film festivals to work out whether I would be getting into trouble by authorising the showing of these films. It seemed to me to be quite anomalous that that should be the case.

In the spirit of the small-l liberalism to which Ms Follett referred, I can say that I have not refused the showing of any films that were put in front of me for showing in the ACT. There were some very odd-sounding films in that list; but, for the most part, it seemed to me that there was no problem in doing so. However, I would feel much more comfortable if that role were played by the Chief Censor, who is better qualified to do that than I am.

Mr Speaker, this Bill, as members have noted, will now provide for the director of the Office of Film and Literature Classification to be able to determine whether material ought to be shown or not. I suppose it is appropriate in those circumstances that some more liberal attitude will be taken to those sorts of films because they are generally art films from overseas. Some films for the gay and lesbian film festival which were shown recently in the Territory were included in those exempted films. A German film festival was held recently. Those sorts of things will happen from time to time. Whereas they might not be classified so readily if they were for broad public release, for a very select audience I think there is less danger in approving something which might otherwise be viewed more harshly if it were to be shown to the broader population. Those are the sorts of issues that this Bill refers to.

To pick up the point that Ms Follett made about violence, I want to put on record my concern that we should deal with the question of violence as well, particularly in things like television programs, films and video games. Members will be aware that at the most recent meeting of the Ministerial Council on Censorship there was debate about changing the classification system. The Ministers ultimately made a decision that there should be a shaving off the top of the R classification of some of the more excessively violent films

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