Why have billboards that ask questions about drivers' s*x lives prompted a national inquiry? Robbie Swan on complaints by religious groups that go on and on

The billboards on our highways are under attack — from parliament and from the righteous. There’s a new morals police on patrol and they’re scouring the highways and byways looking to lodge a complaint with the Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB) or their local member.

A rise in the volume of these complaints has now caused the Attorney-General, Robert McLelland, to order a national inquiry into the regulation of billboard and outdoor advertising. The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) has been calling for such a review for years, and has welcomed the announcement. The inquiry will mark the debut of our newest House of Reps Committee, the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs.

It’s not hard to guess what the complaints have been about. The Advanced Medical Institute’s (AMI) "Want Longer Lasting Sex?" ads have shocked religious groups. In a submission to the inquiry, the ACL complains about "the proliferation of sexualised images in public places", and calls for all outdoor advertising to be G-rated.

Why are religious individuals and communities able to punch so far above their weight in these matters? Although the ASB makes no evaluation or comment about whether a complaint is founded in religious belief, the language and logic of complaints makes it clear that it’s what motivates many. And why is the parliament so accommodating of complaints that are transparently ideological? It only takes one complaint to set off an inquiry — surely if a million people see a billboard over a given period of time, one dissenting voice should not be able to bring it down.

The ASB’s website tells the story clearly enough. A whopping 50 per cent of all complaints are for sex and nudity. Only 7 per cent are for violence — and almost none are for religious billboards. How offensive is the four by two metre message on the Gold Coast highway these days? It greets southerners as they head north with the words, "Jesus is the answer….."? To what? To my mind this sort of billboard promotes anti-intellectualism of the worst kind and, as Karl Marx might have said, it’s roadside opium. Should it be taken down? Well, no. We live in a democracy and that means embracing the right of www.jesuschrist.org.au to ply their wares. But the point is that state and federal governments don’t ban religious billboards on their property.

The most frequent justification for a complaint about AMI’s billboard is this: "How do I explain this to my kids"? Not easily, I’m sure. Asking other people to help sort out communication problems with one’s kids is one thing — but involving the resources of a parliamentary committee and considerable taxpayer dollars, is quite another. At any rate, AMI is in receivership and is being prosecuted by the ACCC — but not for its advertisting.

The antics of an American comedian in the late 1950s remind me of how absurd the fundamentalist mentality can be on these matters. Buck Henry was no fan of religious do-gooders. Under the alias of G. Clifford Prout, he took on the public persona of a morals campaigner dedicated to the enormous task of clothing naked animals around the world. He formed the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA) and pushed slogans like "a nude horse is a rude horse" and "decency today means morality tomorrow". Animal nudity near highways was especially offensive to SINA because (as with billboards advertising the politics of engorgement) decent families off to the beach or a picnic could frequently encounter not only naked animals with their genitals hanging out all over the place but also those in the throes of animal ecstasy. Explaining this to children was also incredibly difficult. An appearance on the Today Show by Prout, saw the new morality quickly grow into a serious group of concerned citizens. Henry’s elaborate hoax was finally brought to an end by Walter Kronkite on the CBS News one night — not before 50,000 people had signed up.

The most worrying thing was that years after it had been exposed, the group still produced a journal for members which contained press releases and sewing patterns for pet clothing! And I have it on good authority, that a fair dinkum Australian clone of SINA called Cover Up Animals’ Rude Parts, (CARP), actually sent a submission to a federal parliamentary committee in the early 1990s complaining among other things, about disgustingness on billboards.

Billboard advertising in Australia is self-regulated by the ASB in the same way that television is ostensibly self-regulated by Free TV Australia and newspapers by the Press Council. By and large the ASB does a pretty fair job. Anyone who has tried to make a complaint about a newspaper will know that your chances of getting it upheld are between Buckleys and none, while the ASB will uphold a reasonable complaint as well as rule against a loony tune.

The real censorship of billboards happens in other ways. The advertising agencies who operate the billboards and the owners of the space that the boards are on often arbitrarily conspire to ban certain types of ads and allow others on the grounds of morality. As owners of the highways, train stations and public utilities, State and Federal governments are among the worst offenders.

If your ad has the word "sex" in it, it’s automatically banned. That doyen of tasteless but harmless horizontal pastimes, Sexpo, cannot put up a billboard on government property. No worries if you’re a weapons manufacturer or supplier to the military. The new-look Canberra airport now sports three sizable and beautifully backlit billboards for Raytheon — right under your nose at the luggage collection point. The implication is that Raytheon’s products and services are less offensive to the general population than Sexpo’s. Where are the opinion polls, the focus group results and the social research to back this policy up?

In 2009, Sexpo had their Adelaide billboard banned by the ASB because of a complaint from someone who objected to a bikini model, hands on hips and thumb hooked inside the top of her bikini bottom, in a way "that suggested she was about to pull it down". I reckon the Raytheon ads position the helicopter gunship in a way that suggests it’s about to shoot up a bunch of Palestinian refugees … but I’d never say that because its just my opinion.

The worst outcome from the current inquiry would be for the Committee to recommend that billboards and other outdoor advertising now fall under the aegis of the Australian Classification Board (ACB). Not only would this mean that the poor old taxpayer would fund yet another layer of official censorship but it would also further restrict what we can see in the sex-as-entertainment and sex-as-information areas. If the Committee were to do this and to apply the logical standard to billboards, then they would be classified using print guidelines, as they are non-moving, printed images. If applied thus, the moral’s groups would have shot themselves in both feet, the groin and the cerebellum all at once because the current Unrestricted Classification for the covers of printed matter allows a lot more sex and nudity than the ASB ais currently prepared to tolerate. Longer lasting sex and winking bikini models fit well within these guidelines.

However what is more likely, is that the ACB would set up another set of printed matter classification guidelines that apply to all outdoor ads along with a set of penalties to be enforced by already overworked state police forces. I don’t know about you but I want police picking up drunks and dangerous drivers — not contemplating whether the latest billboard for Calvin Klein underwear breaches censorship laws.

Source: NewMatilda.com

Opinion polls ain’t cheap these days but at election time the major parties spend a motza on them. Party secs and faction leaders pore over them, searching for hidden trends and subtle messages from the electorate.

But reliable guides to popularity and perception are everywhere if you look hard enough. The latest issue of that beacon of Aussie bbq culture, The Picture magazine, has a big message for Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party if they are man enough to read it.

This week, The Picture editors asked each of the featured Homegirls a deeply disturbing question that goes to the heart of conservative politics. ‘Does Tony Abbott shave his balls?’

This question has plagued political commentators ever since Abbott beat Malcolm Turnbull for the leadership. Many were convinced that the metrosexual Turnbull was clearly in one camp but no one was sure how Abbott hung.
Was he, like Silas in the Da Vinci Code, a hairless god-fearing man who compensated by wearing the hair shirt instead? Or was he the buff boxer from St Ignatius, hirsute and holy to the end?

The 14 Homies were clear. Two said he didn’t shave. Six said he did. But the real poll was that the rest of them (40%) didn’t have a clue who Tony Abbott was!

If Morgans or McNeil came up with a finding like this, there’d be mayhem in the Melbourne Club and blood on the floor in Barton. These are John Howard’s battlers! Imagine 40% of the population not knowing who John Howard was? (It’s a consoling thought, actually). Liberal Party pollsters and analysts need to bone up on these results and consult the chicken entrails at the next Lyons Forum dinner.

They need to study each homie in detail and the voting intentions of thousands of like-minded women will become obvious. Take Bobby Lee from Melbourne. She’s a kickboxing hairdresser who says she would ‘take someone out’ if they said she looked like a slut. She reckons Tony would shave. Alexis from Sydney is a 20 year old student who has a pair of handcuffs permanently attached to her bed and loves being dominated. She says Tony doesn’t shave. Sarah from Hobart who would like to try sex on horseback and sex during a church service, didn’t know Tony from a bar of soap. Just as well though…she’d likely jump the Mad Monk at a church service.

The logical conclusion to these responses is that women who are tough and fight back, reckon Tony’s got no mane down there and is a wimp. Women who like to cop a flogging reckon he’s all man and a hairy beast. And women who are adventurous in their sex lives, don’t know who he is.

Homies represent an important political demographic. They lie in that socio-demographic that is highly mobile, ranges between 18 and 50 years, is often married or de facto and with kids. They are the ultimate swinging voters in every sense of the word and if they’re not on your dance card, then how can you take them home? Tony….Julia??

South Australian Sex Party candidate, Ari Reid recently gave a speech on Human Trafficking, at the United Nations Youth Association Policy Dinner.  Read her speech below.

29th November 2010.

Thanks so much for inviting me to talk tonight about the important and topical issue of human trafficking. As mentioned I am the manager of the South Australian Sex Industry Network (SIN) which is a health funded sex workers project aimed at promoting the health rights and wellbeing of sex workers in South Australia and I am actively involved with Scarlet Alliance, which is the Australian Sex Workers Association. Scarlet Alliance is a member of the Asia Pacific network of sex work projects and other regional and international networks of sex workers. The president of Scarlet alliance, Elena Jeffreys,  sits on the Commonwealth Attorney Generals round table for human trafficking and Scarlet Alliance provides information and advice on policy directions through various submissions and representation roles. The Australian Sex Party congratulate the recent announcement from the Attorney Generals department, to continue funding the important partnership approach between community based organizations and the government.  This funding will allow community based organizations working in this area, such as Scarlet Alliance, to continue their capacity building work with both migrant sex workers here in Australia and overseas sex worker organisations such as Zi Teng in China and Empower in Thialand.

In my own project, SIN, we have a highly successful multicultural project, which is both engaged meaningfully within the Asian sex work community in SA and is also involved in regional partnership projects and research addressing the issues of migrant sex workers and trafficking. SIN and our outreach workers are in the unique position of witnessing the effects of the anti trafficking rhetoric on the very people it claims to want to help. SIN and our partner organizations have done much work and have begun to conduct research into this area.

I have been involved in lobbying for sex worker rights for 7 years and recently joined the Australian Sex Party. I ran as a Sex Party candidate in the last federal election. The Australian Sex Party is only about a year old but has already gained a committed, intelligent and diverse range of voters, supporters, candidates and volunteers. We received 17000 primary votes in South Australia alone and overall came 4th around the nation. Personally I was drawn to the ASP because of its many diverse policies based on evidence, human rights, civil liberties, equality and a distinct lack of moral hysteria or religion. They promise to tackle the issues that all the other parties are too scared to address such as sex education in schools, GLBTIQ equality, Sensible drug reform, a women’s right to choose, anti censorship and sex worker rights.

So with those values in mind I am very proud to be able to present the Australian Sex Parties range of policies to address human trafficking. A range of policies that have been worked on in partnership with the community and drawn from evidence based research with a focus on human rights and anti discrimination. They are policies that recognize that anti trafficking debates typically are conflated with anti sex work approaches. They are policies that come from a rights based approach rather than a victim mentality. They are policies that acknowledge the reality of human trafficking in Australia. The reality is that the trafficking cases we have prosecuted in Australia are akin to exploitation of migrant workers who are further victimized due to their limited rights as illegal workers in sometimes criminalized workplaces. Not the sensationlised media portrayals of women and girls tricked into leaving their homes and then being tied to beds in brothels with bars on the windows. The research shows the reality; migrant workers desperate to travel and cross borders in search of a better life,  as workers have done for centuries. These workers often find it difficult to navigate their way through complex and sometimes racist or sexist immigration laws. Often the only information available is in English. Their work - sex work, not recognized as skilled labour, or is highly criminalized in their home country so they must hide it, certainly not name it as their occupation. Often these workers are unaware of the legal status of sex work in Australia.  Therefore as a last resort people may choose to enter into often unfair or expensive contracts with third parties or traffickers to aid their travel. Once in Australia, these contracts are illegal, and some workers find themselves in exploitative conditions with little or no recourse - language, criminalization, illegal migrant status and their highly stigmatized occupation all creating barriers to seeking rights and protections.

The Australian Sex Party aims to abolish sex slavery and sexual servitude and human trafficking by introducing non morality-based immigration policies that allow migrant sex workers to work legally in Australia. We want to ensure that trafficking remains a crime in Australia; but that sex work is not.

It is legal for sex workers from other countries to travel to most states in Australia for work. Sex work is legal or decriminalized in most states of Australia, with South Australia the only state that continues to completely criminalize all activities surrounding sex work, although many migrant sex workers are unaware of the legal status of sex work before arriving here. In order to protect their rights sex workers must be made aware of their rights.

Generally migrant sex workers experience good work conditions in Australia and most of the difficulties they face will be perpetrated by over-zealous immigration officials and/or police who are seeking to prosecute trafficking. In South Australia it is the asian workplaces that are heavily targeted by Christian rescue and rehab groups or harassed by police who’s job it is to arrest them.

The Australian Sex Party demands an end to all criminal targeting of migrant sex workers and a shift away from a single focus surveillance, detection and policing approach.

We advocate for policies that focus on prevention measures such as increased access to information on legal work migration and visa options, equitable access to visas, and a human rights approach to prevention.

Australian authorities are already prosecuting trafficking crimes; however effective evidence based prevention needs more attention.

The Australian sex party advocates for Visa simplification.
Currently it is more difficult for a migrant sex worker from a developing country (for example Thailand) to travel independently to do sex work in Australia than it is for them to find a trafficker willing to bring them here. Third party agents (ie traffickers) profit from sex workers difficulty with immigration; a more fair and equitable visa system for sex workers would make a valuable contribution to reducing trafficking and improving human rights.

We demand that the Australian government make it easier for sex workers to know what their rights are, by translating immigration resources.
Visa sub-class information, eligibility, forms and visa stamps should be available in a persons local language so that they know the correct visa to apply for and what that visa will mean to them when they are in Australia (ie their work rights). This is a responsibility of the Department of Immigration. Sex workers from other countries would benefit from knowing that sex work is decriminalised, legalised and tolerated in Australia. The Australian Sex Party supports the translation of immigration information to reduce barriers to information for those wanting to navigate their legal passage to Australia.

We support further funding of programmes that build capacity in countries of origin
To support the capacity building of community based peer run sex work projects in countries of origin to educate and advocate for the rights of sex workers both in their own regions and within the immigration systems.

The Australian Sex Party are against extra criminalisation of the sex industry as criminalisation only harms those we want to assist.
Migrant sex workers should have access to occupational health and safety provisions, human rights and industrial law in Australia – extra criminalization of this industry only harms sex workers. Clients of those sex workers who are in exploitative situations are an important tool for getting assistance to those sex workers, criminalizing those clients is detrimental to what we are trying to achieve.

Sex workers who came here via a third party and who are in situations of exploitation are eligible to participate in prosecution of criminal charges against their employers and/or migration agents and will receive welfare and visa support if they give evidence against them. In highly criminalized and underground industries it becomes difficult to distribute this information to those who may need it.

In South Australia, a criminalized sex industry that is heavily policed means we see the rights of sex workers eroded daily, and migrant sex workers are especially vulnerable. We know that sex industry businesses that employ Asian sex workers are targeted by police and sex workers in those businesses are harassed and intimidated. Often local police are not even aware of the rules surrounding the different types of Visa’s and the harassment is completely unwarranted. This leaves sex workers in a position where they cannot trust police and current policing practices do little to combat this issue. Police are historically the prosecutors and abusers of sex workers, not the protectors.

Decriminalise sex work to prevent trafficking.
Expanding sex workers human rights and access to occupational health and safety, information, referral, and advocacy services will help to prevent trafficking. We must empower all people connected to the sex industry to report any criminal behavior or suspicions of actual crimes including sexual servitude, trafficking, underage sex and workplace exploitation. I note and congratulate the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon who recently urged the world  to remove punitive laws, policies, practices, stigma and discrimination that block effective responses to AIDS and exploitation. Mr Ban named decriminalisation of sex work as the best approach to support both the human rights and health of sex workers.

Only rights can stop the wrongs.

To free the ‘slaves’ you must give them rights!

When Attorneys-General from around the country meet next month, reform of the Classification Act is on the agenda. They'll have their work cut out for them, writes Robbie Swan.

When I was a lad, "scag" was a euphemism for heroin. Something that lulled you into a deep sense of "everything’s all right with the world, man" — when really you were totally divorced from reality. These days the term SCAG is an acronym for the State and Commonwealth Attorneys-General" — although over the last few years you could be forgiven for thinking it was tantamount to a stroll through a poppy field. There’s not a lot of action or constructive thinking going on.

SCAG meets every four months and to show that all the states are treated equally, they hold it in a different state each time. They discuss the pressing legal matters of the day and generally devote an afternoon session to censorship issues. Unanimous agreement from all Attorneys is required for any legislative changes. One state attorney with a religious agenda can hold up national censorship law reform — as former South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson did when he refused to agree to an R rating for computer games for the entire time he was A-G.

The upcoming SCAG meeting on 7 December will tackle major reform of Australia’s federal Classification Act for the first time in 15 years.

Labor MPs around the country are still trying to come to grips with the extraordinary actions of NSW Legislative Council President, Amanda Fazio, in crossing the floor and voting with the Greens against a Bill to toughen up adult and non violent pornography laws last month. Why would she risk it all for such a seemingly irrelevant and edgy issue? The answer is that, like many in the ALP, she had simply had enough of government interference in people’s private lives.

This Bill gave NSW police the power to classify adult (potentially X rated) films simply by looking at their covers. They didn’t have to play the film to see what was on the disk and it didn’t matter if the disk inside was in fact, a Disney cartoon. The Bill (brainchild of NSW Attorney General John Hatzistergos and strongly supported by NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione) simply gave police the power to make a determination about the classification of the DVD.