Aboriginal people in the NT are being denied adult erotica because it is alleged that it has provoked or in some way influenced the commission of sex crimes by some aboriginal people. When John Howard initiated this policy in the N.T. as part of the intervention he also considered making it a nationwide ban on X rated (non violent erotic) films. But because there are four million southern, white, middle-class burghers who buy them, he thought better of it.

There was no consultation on this policy at all. No empirical evidence produced to say porn was causing rape or child abuse, no statistics of any kind to back up an action based purely on race. Just pure political expediency and the need to blame something…anything… other than the 200 years of racial abuse and genocide toward First Australians. Anything that was directly under the control of the Commonwealth and was immediately enforceable buy the army and the police. Porn and alcohol were the obvious targets.

And while there are truckloads of data and research about the very negative effects of alcohol on communities, there was nothing about sexual depictions. More than any other part of the N.T. intervention, the bans on so called ‘pornography’ (Non Violent Erotica) have damaged Aboriginal culture by telling white Australians that black Australians are so primitive and anti-social that even depictions of adult sexuality have the potential to turn them into paedophiles, killers and rapists. We’re not talking about kiddie porn or sado-masochism or anything funky here. Howard banned Category 1 Restricted magazines from black eyes. These are legally available from every newsagency, service station and convenience store in the country. If Aboriginal people cannot manage to control their lust while viewing magazines that sit alongside Women’s Weekly in a newsagent, what sort of message does this send to the rest of the community?

Nowhere in the initial Little Children Are Sacred report did the authors call for bans on X18+ films. Instead, they called for education around the classification scheme (Page 200) and enforcement of the current NT Classification Act. The report implied that minors were viewing adult material in an inappropriate fashion because Aboriginal adults had no idea that sexually explicit material could confuse children or that it was an offence to show an X18+ film or adult magazine to a minor. The Community Liaison Scheme of the Classification Board is funded in part by a percentage of classification fees collected by the Commonwealth, including X18+ fees. This scheme includes a permanent and ongoing educational unit with three people in it and a job specification that includes education of the general public about the classification scheme. This unit has never visited an Aboriginal community over the many years that it has been constituted. Nor has it developed any culturally appropriate translations of the film, publications and computer game classifications. Howard should have arranged for this to happen rather than take the populist approach of ‘banning porn’.

Enough time has now elapsed for the Rudd Labor government to make a judgement about whether the suspension of federally classified, X18+ films and Category One and Two Restricted Publications into these communities has made any difference to sex crime rates. But they have preferred to follow in the footsteps of that great champion of Aboriginal causes, John Howard, and ignore the facts by continuing the bans indefinitely. Minister Jenny Macklin even pre-empted the review of the intervention some months ago by saying she would not consider reversing the bans. She’s not reading the debate very well. The material she is banning is classified by her own government, using a rigorous set of guidelines, as “containing no violence or non consent of any kind” and as suitable for all Australian adults to purchase, sell and possess. The prescribed markings on these films state that the film “contains sexually explicit material” and that “Showing this film to under 18s may be a criminal offence”. Nowhere in the Classification Guidelines, the Code or the Act does it suggest that these films should not be shown to adult Aboriginal people (or to any ethnic minority for that matter) or that ethnic minorities maybe adversely affected by them. There has never been any research of any kind that suggests that racial extraction has a bearing on how people may react to viewing acts of filmed or published (non-violent) sex. In fact, the notion that somehow Aboriginal people will react violently and inappropriately to filmed or printed depictions of non-violent sex is deeply racist and totally bereft of any factual basis. It perpetuates the notion of Aboriginal people as ‘savages’ with an uncontrollable lust that is easily ignited. It also perpetuates the notion that adult Aboriginal people have the mental faculties of young children, who do need to be protected from sexually explicit imagery for obvious reasons. Unlike the sale of alcohol, which affects people of all races in a similar fashion and unlike the illicit use of drugs that have been proven to alter character and distort normal personality of all races, no such claim can be backed up by clinical research from any country in the world about depictions of sexual acts.

At the same time as this ludicrous situation continues to be upheld, no one seems to think that the sale and possession of extremely violent and gruesome slasher films in the R rated category is a problem. Neither, it seems, is the open availability of this material through satellites into remote communities.

Howard ignored suggestions that he might apply the findings of the Australian Institute of Criminology’s landmark research into ‘pornography-effects’ (AIC Research – Trends and Issues, #9) to his policies around the NT intervention. This world-review of existing research showed conclusively that “sexually explicit but non violent media was of no threat to the community in quoted research”.

If the lack of logic and reasonableness around porn in the NT intervention is any indication of how rational the debate has been around other areas, the problems will never be solved.

Robbie Swan
Public Officer