Two years ago LA Zombie, an award winning film by the critically acclaimed director Bruce La Bruce was prohibited from being shown at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival. It was internationally embarrassing and the sad thing is that the former Victorian Attorney General Rob Hulls could have intervened and allowed this film to be shown but he didn't.

There is no doubt that the current conservative Attorney General, Robert Clark, will not be defending any free speech notions any time soon. I once tried to give him an X rated film, Debbie Does Dallas number 5 but he almost fainted when I pulled it out of the paper bag in the parliament house Member's Dining Room. I quickly put it back in the bag and handed it to him. He shook his head and waived his hands until I put it back in my bag!

Victorian politicians rarely, if ever, defend or even comment on free speech and LA Zombie was a good example. This film has screened in hundreds of countries and won a string of festival awards. The proposed Melbourne screening was to an adults only audience at a film festival, yet the Australian Classification Board felt that without even viewing it, it was too sexually explicit for the sensitive tastes of the Melbourne adult film festival goers. Not a single politician spoke out about this, not Labor, not Liberal, not even the Greens.

Nothing has changed in the Victorian Parliament. There still isn't a single, solitary voice speaking out for civil liberties and free speech.
And this has resulted in some ridiculous regulations such as the recent ban on swearing in nightclubs.

I met the star actor of LA Zombie, François Sagat, at an adult film convention a little while ago. He is a great guy and was quite bemused and confused as to how all of his explicit sex films are available in Australia yet the very serious allegorical film, LA Zombie, was banned.

The only good outcome from the decision was that Francois became a fan of the Sex Party: