Franks Stephen: Films Videos and Publications Classification Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Franks Stephen: Films Videos and Publications Classification Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:615;Page:11461] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party to support the introduction of this bill. I was very pleased to hear the Minister in charge explain in clear terms that the bill does not propose to follow the recommendations of the Government Administration Committee. Last year the select committee produced a report that would have to be one of the most woeful pieces of reasoning to have come out of this House in that time. It was a report that basically said that the censor should have the power to ban things that the censor did not like. 
The United Future party followed that report by quickly leaping in with a member’s bill to implement the Government Administration Committee’s move. I suspect the reason we now have the Government introducing this bill—a year later—is that for a while it thought that United Future would get in with its bill to do the Government Administration Committee’s absurd work. 
 What has happened is that United Future realised a little belatedly that it was a massive own goal. Essentially Marc Alexander’s little bill was going to give the censor power to ban things like the Living Word video and other publications that might powerfully make a case against for example homosexuality prostitution or the other things that United Future did not like while at the same time leaving the censor free to allow circulation of all kinds of demeaning dehumanising and worse than immoral publications that were very powerful propagations of messages that United Future did not want. We have a bill that has been dressed up to look as if it is all about child pornography but in its genesis was really a bill to head off a United Future own goal—even though United Future realised it only last week when Marc Alexander withdrew his member’s bill. 
This bill deals with censorship. Censorship has an irony or a flaw right at its core. It has been recognised for many years that often—in the name of art or serious discussion of issues of great topicality—very powerful artistic works get the nod and can go through because they have merits that allegedly outweigh their detrimental effects. They are works that are very persuasive in advocating lifestyles that might horrify the majority or which might be thought to undermine values that most communities have held dear. These powerful works are allowed to circulate because of the balancing that the censor does and probably because of the censor’s own elitist preferences. 
Meanwhile the tawdry scruffy ugly forms of eroticism—the forms that most people probably turn away from for their own sanity and feeling of cleanliness—are banned. So one finds that censorship tends to focus on stuff that probably is not very effective and is forced to allow through the really great works of art—and Mr Richard Worth mentioned some of them—that probably have far more influence in changing mores and ideas of what is and is not socially or culturally acceptable. Those kinds of works are allowed through. For that reason many people have said in the end that censorship itself is doomed to fail and is too dangerous a concept to have in our law because it simply allows people to misuse it to suppress legitimate discussion. 
In New Zealand we saw that when the Court of Appeal had to send back to the censor—twice in effect—classifications in which the censor attempted to prevent people from arguing that homosexuality was wrong. These were videos that involved fully clothed sober boring-looking adults claiming what had been mainstream traditional views of homosexuality only 20 years earlier. The censor was able to twist the words of the Act which is being changed here to persuade himself that the board had a power to essentially ban the circulation of those documents because they would offend gays. 
I am not arguing here that either side was right or wrong in terms of the influence of those publications. But what was very clear was that the Court of Appeal told the film censors to go back to the drawing board look at the Act and only ban things that had the elements that were set out—sex horror violence exploitation of children torture and so forth. The censors disgracefully sat on the matter for months and months and in that they were abetted by this Government. This Government failed to abide by the Act failed to appoint new members to the board ignored petitions and applications from people with a direct interest left the office of Bill Hastings the Chief Censor without a deputy and connived at this law being a mockery. Successive Ministers simply ignored the fact that they had allowed the appointment of members of the board to expire and had not bothered to find new ones. 
So what do we now see in this bill? Sitting right down the back of it we find a cute little provision in wording that I had to read three or four times that essentially does not mean what it says with regard to the expiry of the term of office of a board member. Board members stay there for ever if the Government does not get around to appointing new ones. 
Peter Brown 
: Where is that? 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: It is in clause 17 “Membership”. Subclause (2) of that clause gives the Government the power to essentially leave people for life if they wish. So the Government is retrospectively making permanent a scandalous state of affairs that was temporary. It is saying that appointments to this body could be for life. In fact the appointees will be there at the pleasure of the Minister. Because next time—if there is a next time for United Future—one of the stipulations of the coalition agreement with the Government might be that that party decides who will be on the Film Censorship Board. It might be a small price for a desperate Labour Party to pay to retain office and we could well find that the censorship board— 
Judith Collins 
: They will be talking to us! 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: I certainly hope that that condition is not one that National or ACT would see as tradable. It would not be a tradable item for ACT—that is for certain! 
This bill does of course have the camouflage of increasing penalties on child porn and that is the reason that we will send it to the select committee. The definitions are not improved. The bill very cutely claims that it clarifies for the avoidance of doubt that sexualised images of nude or partially nude children are a matter of sex and therefore can be classified as objectionable. I do not think that avoids doubt. When I look at that definition as a lawyer of 20 years experience I think it simply increases it because the definition says that they fall into that category if the visual images of children or young persons who are nude or partially nude “are reasonably capable of being regarded as sexual in nature”. If the provision were really removing doubt it would have said “likely” or “intended” or that there would have been something not reasonably capable. 
The problem with censorship is that an awful lot of this material—indeed most of it—is in the minds of the beholders. I suspect that for my generation looking at anatomy texts in the school library was capable of being sexual in nature. So this test is just a change for the sake of looking as if the Government is doing something. This Government comes to everything with its political spectacles on. It does not matter about the quality of the law. It does not matter whether it really makes it more likely that enforcement will stick or that convictions will be secured. The Government does this for camouflage. It does it to look as if it is doing something about porn when it is not.