CLASSIFICATION (PUBLICATIONS, FILMS AND COMPUTER GAMES) (CLASSIFICATION PROCESS) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 22 July 2008. Page 3557.)

The Hon. S.G. WADE (17:06): I rise to indicate that the opposition will support this bill, which seeks to update South Australian legislation to reflect changes in the national classification scheme. The national classification scheme is an arrangement between the commonwealth, the states and territories established under the 1996 intergovernmental agreement for a cooperative censorship scheme.

The commonwealth Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995 establishes the framework for the classification of publications, films and computer games and review of classification decisions. Early in 2007, the commonwealth act was amended to introduce an additional content assessment scheme, to alter the definition of 'film' and to allow for certain modifications to be made to already classified films without affecting their classification.

The complete commonwealth Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment Act 2007 took effect in March 2008. This bill amends the South Australian act to take account of the administrative changes. The South Australian act, although primarily concerned with offence and enforcement matters, also provides some scope for organisations approved by the minister to make an application for exemption from the classification of a specific film at a specific event.

It is the opposition's view that these changes are realistic updates of our censorship regime. Having said that, I indicate my personal concern at some of the statements of the Attorney-General in the context of this bill. In the House of Assembly, the Attorney-General said that he prefers to call classification legislation 'censorship legislation' and that he succeeded in persuading ministers in the ministerial council to refer to themselves as censorship ministers.

During the second reading of the bill, the Attorney-General interjected while the shadow attorney-general was speaking to insist that he was a censor. I support the Attorney-General in opposing the use of mealy-mouthed words which hide or deny reality but, when one reads Hansard, the Attorney-General is not merely promoting frankness but is bragging about his assertive stance on censorship.

Personally, I believe that that hairy-chested approach to censorship is not appropriate. Censorship is a tool available to government which should be used sparingly. Governments are duty-bound to exercise the tool when they need to protect the government; however, it is a tool which governments and institutions have misused over centuries. Censorship is a power which should be used with great caution and to the minimum extent necessary.

As ministers and parliamentarians, our first resort should be to engage in public debate. Censorship can stifle the development of moral formation in individuals and the community. As exposure to the flu strengthens the immune system, so public exposure of morally questionable material gives society the opportunity to express its disgust and thus affirm and communicate what is and what is not acceptable. As J.S. Mill put it in his book On Liberty:

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

In conclusion, I make the point that it is important for us as parliamentarians to appreciate the importance of developing a moral culture in our community, not merely by resorting to legislation or using administrative force but, rather, by participating in public debate and making sure that our body politic and our community are healthy.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (17:10): I rise on behalf of Family First to strongly support this bill. I take the unusual step of congratulating the Attorney-General on his actions in relation to this measure, and I will outline those in a moment. Family First is adamant that our children, in particular, must be protected from inappropriate content in film, on the internet, in computer games and, indeed, elsewhere.

In many cases, such as in the equal opportunity debate, for example, Family First equally insists on freedom of speech. There is no inconsistency here. There is a vast difference between genuine free speech and what is, essentially, people making money out of undesirable content. I defend our stance against declining standards on television and in computer games, for example, while at the same time fighting for genuine freedom of speech as it is put under threat by the equal opportunity bill.

The common refrain is that porn does no harm: if you do not like it, just change channels or switch the television off. However, the research is clear. We know categorically that bombarding children with constant sexual images and violence does them tremendous harm—long-lasting and sometimes, sadly, intractable harm.

The social fabric of our society is weakened by a disregard for the material our children, in particular, are allowed to watch on television or play on their Xbox or other device. Our children now have access not only to soft-core-type pornography but also to explicit, deviant sexual material, and they are hearing the dangerous message that sex without responsibility is acceptable and, indeed, desirable, and it is promoted as such in some mediums. Chlamydia infection rates amongst teenagers have skyrocketed in recent times, which provides some evidence of this.

Indeed, the sexually transmitted disease services department of the Royal Adelaide Hospital advises me that, in 2003, 441 teenagers were reported as having chlamydia; in 2004, that number rose to 581; in 2005, there were 588 reported cases; and, in the most recent 2006 data, the number soared to 747 cases. These are teenagers. These figures demonstrate an almost 70 per cent increase in infection in only a few years.

These days, more children are contracting sexually transmitted diseases each year than all the victims of polio in its 11-year epidemic from 1942 to 1953. These figures are completely unacceptable, and they have come about because we are sending the wrong messages to our children via the media and in other ways. Indeed, the over-sexualisation of children, and a complete disregard for what material we present to them, plays a major part in explaining these numbers. One study notes:

Males who are exposed to a great deal of erotica before the age of 14 are more sexually active and more engaged in more varied sexual behaviours as adults than is true for males not so exposed.

The study goes on to state that among 932 so-called sex addicts 90 per cent of men and 77 per cent per cent of women reported that pornography was significant to their addiction.

The fact is that teenagers are significantly impacted by what they see in the media. A 2003 study, published by The Lancet, found that teenagers who watched a string of movies in which smoking was heavily portrayed were up to three times more likely to take up the habit. So, what they watched was thought to have a subconscious effect on promoting smoking.

A definitive study, entitled Television and the Adolescent Boy, was conducted some time ago by an Australian doctor, Dr William Beldon. The study involved 1,566 London boys aged 13 to 16 and divided them into two groups according to their exposure to televised violence. The study conclusively showed that long-term exposure to televised violence increased the degree to which boys engaged in violent behaviour.

A related 22-year longitudinal study by US researchers, Dr Leonard Eron and Dr Rowell Huesmann, also concluded that there was a significant link between television viewing at aged eight and the seriousness of criminal convictions by the age of 30. A clear link was established.

Children reared on a diet of TV violence had a 150 per cent more chance of being convicted of a criminal offence by the time they were 30 than children reared with little exposure to television violence. I reiterate: children reared on a diet of television violence had a 150 per cent greater chance of being convicted of a criminal offence by the time they were 30 than children reared with little exposure to TV violence.

As computer games become more realistic and immersive, then, no doubt, they would have an equal or even greater effect than indicated by these studies that dealt with television and movies—somewhat simple media of the past. A lot of people have told me in the past that Big Brother or sexualised music videos, for example, during children's TV times, The Gordon Ramsay Show, Grand Theft Auto IV etc., all cause no harm. Family First disagrees, and will continue to be vocal opponents of any inappropriate content that finds a way into the media, especially where viewed and undertaken by children.

I was one of the most vocal critics in this place against the Grand Theft Auto IV game when it was released earlier this year. The game includes blood and gore, drug-running, assassinations—this is a game, remember—and the ability to choose body parts of enemies that you want to shoot at or shoot off. One version of the game enabled the player to pick up a prostitute and then run her over after he had sex with her. As one reviewer of Grand Theft Auto IV put it:

...in-game sex [is] offered up and drunk down like flavoured water.

Another reviewer said:

If you grow tired of running around town executing fellow crooks, you can spend some much-needed R&R bashing cars into pedestrians.

The terrible shooting massacre at Virginia Tech in the US in which 32 people died involved a mentally ill student who, by his own admission, was obsessed with violent computer games like Counter-Strike. I think my concerns in this regard are well justified.

The bill before us today implements a national framework that streamlines the classification process and reduces certain regulatory burdens on the industry. It introduces an additional content assessment scheme and allows for certain modifications (such as subtitles, captions, dubbing and audio descriptions or the addition of navigation aids) to be made to already classified films without affecting their classification. Family First has no concern about those measures.

Finally, as I alluded to in my opening, I want to acknowledge the steadfast opposition of the Attorney-General to changing the classification. We will not have an R18+ rating for video games as a result of the good work that he did. Consequently, certain very violent or pornographic video games will not receive a classification and will therefore be banned from sale. In the face of opposition from all other states, our Attorney-General stood firm, as I understand it. I think that his stand is one of the great contributions to our children's welfare, and we certainly thoroughly respect it and would like to acknowledge it appropriately.

With those words, Family First supports the second reading of the bill and we look forward to the committee stage.

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Small Business) (17:17): I thank members for their indication of support for this bill. At this stage I should indicate that the government will move amendments to the bill and, for that reason, I do not seek to move to the committee stage beyond today: we can do that when we resume in September. However, I would just like to indicate why this has come about.

The proposed amendments, which I think have been tabled, are consequential upon recent amendments made to the commonwealth act by the Classifications (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment (Assessments and Advertising) Bill 2008, which passed the Senate on 24 June 2008.

The commonwealth amending bill was introduced in the 41^st parliament on 22 March 2007 but, as it lapsed when the federal parliament was prorogued in October 2007, those consequential amendments were not included in the state bill because of the uncertainty about whether they would be introduced and, if so, in what form. In fact, the bill was reintroduced with a minor amendment. As the amendments consequential upon the latest commonwealth bill are consistent with those contained in the state bill before us, it is appropriate and convenient to include them in that bill.

The commonwealth amendments consist of two sets of reforms. The first set of reforms will replace the prohibition on advertising unclassified films and computer games with a scheme that will allow advertising, subject to conditions to be contained in a new commonwealth instrument. The reforms will establish an industry-based self-assessment scheme for assessing the likely classification of an unclassified film or computer game that is advertised with a classified film or computer game. The Classification Board will make the final decision on classification, but will be assisted by the assessments. Unclassified films and computer games will be advertised only with classified films or computer games of the same or higher level.

The second set of reforms will establish a television series assessment scheme which will enable compilations of episodes of a television series, at least one of which has already been broadcast in Australia, to be classified prior to release. Appropriately trained and authorised assessors may provide a report and a recommendation to the Classification Board to assist it to classify a boxed set of episodes of the television series. Again, the Classification Board retains responsibility for classifying the film, and the details of the scheme will be contained in a commonwealth legislative instrument.

The amendments were developed in response to concerns expressed by industry about the application of the existing laws in a marketplace of rapidly developing technology and are uncontroversial. Briefly, the proposed amendments will:

insert the commonwealth definitions of 'advertising scheme', 'authorised television series assessor' and 'television series film' into the state act;

insert a new section into the state act to allow the council or the minister, for the purposes of the assessment of a television series film, to take into account an assessment of the film prepared by an authorised television assessor;

delete section 22 from the state act, which prohibits the classification of a film or computer game if it contains an advertisement for a film or computer game that has not been classified, or an advertisement for a film or computer game that has a higher classification, and substitute new section 22, which allows for classification of films and computer games that contain advertisements in accordance with the commonwealth act advertising scheme;

insert a new section that mirrors section 21AB of the commonwealth act and will allow the council or the minister to revoke, in certain circumstances, a classification that was made in reliance on an assessment made under the new scheme;

insert a new division 4 into part 3 of the bill to allow for assessments to be made of likely classifications of unclassified films and unclassified computer games;

amend section 67, which currently prohibits the publication of advertisements for unclassified films and unclassified computer games, to allow the publication of advertisement for an unclassified film or an unclassified computer game in accordance with the advertising scheme;

amend section 68 to insert new subsection (2) prohibiting the screening of an advertisement for an unclassified film in a public place, unless it complies with the advertising scheme;

amend section 70 to prohibit the sale of a classified film that is accompanied by an advertisement for an unclassified film, unless the advertisement complies with the advertising scheme; and

amend section 71 to prohibit the sale or demonstration of a classified computer game in a public place that is accompanied by an advertisement for an unclassified computer game, unless the advertisement complies with the advertising scheme.

Given those changes to the commonwealth act it would be appropriate to update those in this act. Given the late time of their coming up, we believe it would be appropriate to introduce the amendments now and put them on the table before the council, and we can consider them when we resume after the winter break. I thank honourable members for their contribution to the bill, and I look forward to the second reading.

Bill read a second time.