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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-10-16 Daily Xml
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CLASSIFICATION (PUBLICATIONS, FILMS AND COMPUTER GAMES) (CLASSIFICATION PROCESS) AMENDMENT BILL

Final Stages

Consideration in committee of the Legislative Council's amendments.

(Continued from 15 October 2008. Page 441.)

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: I move:

That the Legislative Council’s amendments be agreed to.

The amendments contained in the bill are consequential upon reforms contained in two commonwealth bills. The first commonwealth bill assented to on the ides of March 2007 contained amendments that allowed the integration of the Office of Film and Literature Classification into the commonwealth government Attorney-General's Department and introduced the additional content assessment scheme. Consequential amendments were necessary to recognise the new commonwealth administrative arrangements and to allow the South Australia Classification Council to receive and consider assessments under the new commonwealth additional content assessment service. Those amendments were contained in the bill introduced into parliament on 6 December last year.

The second commonwealth bill, which contained amendments to allow the advertising of some unclassified films and computer games and to change the classification procedures for television series films, passed the Senate on 24 June 2008 and was assented to on 1 July 2008. The amendments made to this bill in another place were consequential upon the amendments contained in the second set of commonwealth changes. The bill makes minor consequential amendments to the act that will ensure that the cooperative nature of the censorship scheme is preserved. The amendments introduced by the commonwealth are aimed at improving the operation of the scheme, responding to changing technology in the entertainment media, reducing cost to industry and reducing processing time for classification.

I am satisfied that the commonwealth amendments, which are the result of extensive public consultation through 2007, and the consequential amendments in the bill contain sufficient safeguards to ensure the integrity of the scheme and the safety of the viewing public.

Mrs REDMOND: As I indicated at the commencement of this discussion, the opposition will be supporting the proposed amendments in their entirety. The bill has a familiar-sounding title because, in fact, what we are doing now is catching up some amendments that were passed by the commonwealth parliament that were not put through quite in time for the earlier bill that we have already dealt with in this house.

Members probably recall that we have, not very long ago, dealt with the original bill dealing with classification, publications, films and computer games. I know that the Attorney loves computer games. It is because of computer games and their classification that the Attorney has recently made it to No. 6 on the most hated people in Australia list, in fact I think he was the highest ranked South Australian on the list by a long way. So, it is good that he likes being so hated by the people who like computer games.

No doubt the Attorney will be pleased to know that at least one of the games for which there was no classification available in South Australia, largely because the use of the substance of morphine as a painkiller was referred to in the game, so the game makers changed the name to a fictitious name. They did not change the game at all, but having changed the term 'morphine' to a fictitious name they were able to get the game classified and, in fact, they have had that name changed all around the world. But back to the point of the discussion.

The earlier bill that we dealt with, according to my recollection, did three things. First of all, it allowed for an easier classification for films that come out as DVDs. Members would be familiar with the situation where films which are shown in movie theatres are, obviously, classified, and frequently those films are (not very long afterwards) released as DVDs.

The problem which the earlier bill sought to address was that that film then had to go back through the whole classification process, if the DVD being released contained—as they frequently do—any extra or different information or film from what was in the original film released in movie theatres. Frequently one would have, for instance, a movie that might have some outtakes, interviews with cast, director's comments on the film, and sometimes they will even have alternative endings and all that sort of stuff, but the problem was that, when you wanted to release the DVD, you had to go right back through the whole classification process.

The first thing that the earlier bill did was address that by saying, 'Well, although there is still going to be the classification process in the background, we will authorise some specially trained people to assess whether the new stuff on this DVD package actually makes any difference to the classification, and that will streamline that.'

The second thing it did was allow certain organisations to gain exemption from classification for specific events. I think, from memory, that the Attorney's comments on the second reading of the earlier bill dealt with the fact that most of the exemptions that he grants are for specific ethnic groups holding ethnic festivals and so on. So, although it can be for film festivals, and so on, at large, a lot of the exemptions granted by the Attorney are to do with Indian groups and so on.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: Tamil films.

Mrs REDMOND: Tamil films, and so on, coming into the country, where they want to show those for people to see films in their own language about their own culture and, quite properly, they do not need to go through this vast classification experience.

The original bill dealt with trying to make clear that the Classification Board and the Classification Review Board are, in fact, two separate entities that have two separate jobs. In this house, we dealt with that bill. It went to the Legislative Council, and the second reading debate occurred. At the end of that debate, the minister introduced amendments which, as I said, were necessitated by the fact that the bill we had already dealt with and the new amendments were really just keeping us in step with the commonwealth classifications process so that we and the other states all had the same classification guidelines.

Between when we started dealing with the original bill and its reaching the end of the second reading in the Legislative Council, the commonwealth government (which, of course, had changed and no-one knew what would happen for a while) finally passed these further amendments. As I read them, they do two main things.

I place on record my appreciation for the staff who were made available to provide a briefing. I apologise to them that it was a somewhat difficult briefing in that I simply could not get my head around it, and it took me a while to go away and read it in detail so that I could be confident that what I thought it was saying was what it was saying.

The further set of amendments does two things, and it is covered by the eight amendments in the items now put before the committee. First, it replaces what is probably a prohibition on advertising an unclassified film with a scheme that will allow advertising, subject to some conditions laid down by the commonwealth.

I do not go the movies very often, but I have a suspicion that, in fact, some of this is already in operation, even though it has not been happening formally. I am sure that, when I went with my staff to see Mama Mia, the musical, there were things advertised that bore a little sign stating, 'This film is yet to be classified.' These amendments authorise the advertising of a film that has not yet been classified.

Indeed, what it will do is allow an industry-based group of people to provide a sort of tentative classification. It is still subject to review by the appropriate board, but it will be able to advertise those films provided that the tentative classification is no higher than the film it will be shown with as an advertisement in a film theatre (that is, more 'adult only'). That is the first amendment in this further set of amendments.

The second relates largely to the problem we have already dealt with in the case of films becoming DVDs. What about the case of television series that become boxed sets of television series? I know that some of my kids have extensive boxed sets of their favourite television series. Again, like DVDs, they often incorporate extra information, interviews with people, explanations and all sorts of extra stuff.

This set of amendments provides that we will have a regime whereby that boxed set can be classified without going through the whole formal classification process again, provided that at least one episode of the series has already been on television here and therefore, in its format for television, been through the original classification process. That is very similar to the streamlining that was done for films that become DVDs. A streamlining process is put in place for television series being issued as a boxed set. That is not to say that they will avoid any scrutiny. There will still be scrutiny of the system.

I have no doubt that the Attorney, or myself—if I am ever attorney—will take great note of anyone who actually seeks to subvert the intent of this by providing an approval and a classification for something that clearly is very different and does not reflect accurately what our intention is. In other words, it will not be appropriate for someone to hide behind this sort of self-classification system to put into the market DVDs, or boxed sets of DVDs, of television series which are not truly reflective of the classification already granted to the original television program.

They are the issues covered by these further amendments and, as I said, it is really a matter of catch-up. Had we known about them, no doubt the amendments would have been introduced while the bill was in this house; however, because of the timing, the original further amendments got caught up in a change of government at the federal level and did not catch up to us until the latter part of this year. The amendments were introduced by the minister in another place only on the last day of sitting and, hence, have come back from the Legislative Council for our consideration. They are amendments with which we are happy to agree.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: I should respond to the member for Heysen's mentioning to the committee that Zoo Weekly voted me the sixth most unpopular person in the world. I am more unpopular, for instance, than Radovan Karadzic, who is alleged to have killed 8,000 people at Potocari and Srebrenica. Zoo Weekly, of course, is an erotic magazine, and I am happy to be voted an unpopular or annoying person by readers of an erotic magazine. For the benefit of the member for Heysen, I am also unpopular with my three sons for maintaining a ban on R18-plus computer games.

I now offer the opportunity before the public gaze for the member for Heysen to tell the public what she would do on the question of R18-plus computer games if she were Attorney-General. Is she in favour of allowing them or will she maintain the ban?

The CHAIR: Order! The member for Heysen has no need whatsoever to comment on that.

Motion carried.

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