Censorship: No! Labelling: Yes!

Donald McDonald, who took over as chief censor in 2007, seemed to echo Williams when referring to the correspondence the Board receives:

Everyone has a view, everyone believes they would make better decisions and everyone would more accurately reflect the views of the community!

McDonald cannot act against the law that leans so heavily on unspecified and unstated community standards that are the cause of so much controversy. The four people who sat as a Board of Review that banned Baise Moi did not act for everyone, but on an interpretation of the guidelines. The 50,000 or so Australians who saw the movie before it was banned had no problem with it (the few complainants excepted). If “everyone” would make a better censor, let everyone censor for themselves and their dependent youngsters. There is no community view on consumables but, rather, an aggregation of individual views that happen to coincide. Some approve of an item, some disapprove, some don’t have an opinion; communities are like that - opinions differ.

My opinion favours labelling over censorship. The Board would become unnecessary if arts-media items were required to include descriptions of contents, as do all other packaged consumables.

A final note

The Attorneys-General from all States and Territories were to meet with the Federal Attorney-General a week before Christmas to discuss the controversial R-rated video games issue. I wrote to the Federal Attorney-General, in time for that meeting, on the matter of labelling arts-media and transferring oversight of it the consumer affairs department. I had already written to NSW Premier, Keneally some weeks earlier on this subject; she, in turn passed my letter to Mr Hatzistergos, New South Wales Attorney-General. In my letter to the Federal A-G, I told him of my letter to Keneally-Hatzistergos and hoped those gentlemen would find a moment or two to discuss it. At the time of this writing, and although the video games issue was settled at that meeting, neither of the gentlemen has yet found the time to reply.