Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am glad to speak to the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment Bill 2006. Even though it is non-controversial, it deals with a major area of future concern. I have no difficulty whatsoever with it. As the shadow minister has indicated, Labor does not have difficulty with the change of the classification function in this instance, covered by this bill, from the board to the Attorney-General’s office. In schedules 1, 2 and 4 there are a series of what I would see as relatively minor amendments, but I note in passing that in schedule 2 there is a reinforcement of the independence of the Classification Board and the Classification Review Board. What they are intending to do in schedule 1 is to try to get a better integration of the Office of Film and Literature Classification into the Attorney-General’s Department.

In schedules 1 and 2 it is a question of better defining who controls this mechanism. The decision has been taken to bring that into the Attorney-General’s office. I have no problem with that whatsoever. I think it is a sensible thing that schedule 2 underlines the independence of the Classification Board and the Classification Review Board.

What interests me in particular is the whole question of schedule 3 because it involves a series of changes in consultation with the industry. They are changes to attempt to get flexibility and certainty in the area of new media and in the way in which material is classified, in order to be able to pin down whether or not something is a new work and to pin down the definition of a film. The reason for the change is that we have seen already such dramatic changes in the way in which content is distributed Australia-wide and worldwide, and this bill attempts to deal with distribution on DVD.

In the old days, as you would remember, Mr Deputy Speaker—as I and others in the chamber would—we just did not have the problems that we are faced with currently. For example, we have recently had produced up to 18 minutes of our first real feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang. In the old days, there were not many places to show it. There was the local cinema, as the cinema complexes were built through the 1910s and then in the 1920s and 1930s, and the outback country shows, which were often held on a Sunday night in open-air tents. In those contexts, it was relatively easy to control not just the classification of the material but also the distribution of it. It was pretty simple and straightforward. The drama in those days was the content of a film and whether or not it was deemed to be appropriate in terms of distribution to a wide audience.

Those questions are still with us. They are still with us in this bill and they are still with us in terms of classification. But there is a particular set of problems that this bill tries to grapple with; that is, there is more than one method of distribution. Even after a work has been through classification—and these schedules tie it down quite nicely—it does not have just one element of distribution. It will be played at the flicks, where it will get a relatively short period of time, unless it is a big blockbuster. Then there will be a later distribution—some years later, in some cases—which will be fairly narrow, through the broadcast medium on TV. There will be a bit of retro if the film has some impact. There are also now two other areas because we now have very quick distribution through DVD. The reason for that is not just piracy and the fact that stuff can be knocked off very quickly. The industry itself, after taking a very long look at this, said, ‘What we have to do is not only release, where we will get a certain amount of money out of it, but also follow that almost conjointly—in a lot of cases it is conjointly—with DVD distribution.’ There are two different markets here.

This creates two different problems. If you take a film or a work and go through all the business of classifying it, all the drama of deciding whether it is too violent or whether there are problems with classification because of sex and so on, and you get that work all bottled up and put down on a DVD, what happens when they put extra bits into it? That is fundamentally what schedule 3 is about, because the extra bits can be extraordinarily different or they can be pretty similar. Now, what are you going to do with it? Just because you put it onto a new medium, is it a new work? Is it a new film? The answer to that is, of course, no. This is quite ostensibly established here. If you wanted to be pedantic you could say, ‘Oh but it’s a new medium.’ People used to think of that in that way: it is a new medium therefore it is something different. To me, the medium that you use to distribute it is relatively unimportant. It is the content itself that they are attempting to pin down here.

Why is there a particular problem? Now, instead of one form of a work or a film or however you want to depict it, there are multiple forms. We now have director’s cuts, extended versions and so on. The Good Shepherdwhich I picked as part of my research today in reading this morning’s papers—is only the second film that has been produced by one of the world’s great actors, who acted in eight of Martin Scorsese’s very violent films. That is Robert De Niro, who has made two films. This film one is about the CIA between 1939 and 1961, and it is about the human impact of people being involved in things. In terms of classification, there would be no problem in terms of violence or difficulty for this particular film, because most of that has been cut out in the released version at the cinemas. But in the extended version there are a series of violent scenes which the Classification Board would have to come to terms with and make a determination about. So you have a difference between what is put out in the cinemas and what is put out on DVDs in these extended versions.

Instead of it being seen as a new work, schedule 3 properly sees it as part of the original film or the original work, as it is not going to be completely done over again. But they have to look at those elements and ask, ‘Given that this is a material part of the work, does it still fall within those classifications?’

What is more important—and this is one of the difficulties in dealing with the minutiae of all this—is that they can load just about anything you can imagine into an extended DVD presentation. It is not just the original work itself; it is all the offshoot stuff. I say in passing that the most boring stuff you could probably ever come across, having watched a film, is to then go back and watch the film again with the director, and his sidekick quite often, commenting on what the film is about. One could ask: ‘Didn’t you get it the first time? Weren’t they good enough in terms of telling you what the film was about?’ I do not mind them having a series of shorts where they explain what they think the film is about, but to do a complete rerun is just a waste of space in this area.

There are other particular things dealt with in the bill that are extremely important, not just in terms of the classification question but also in terms of just what Australian industry’s role is in this regard, and how it should be properly dealt with. I commend the people who have put this work together and the Attorney on the work done here in terms of how you deal with these different elements, because it is important. There are distinctions between what the film or the work is and what is additional content—what is germane to that—and there is even the question of having a fictional town and adding stuff in relation to that. But what is not defined—and it is important that it is clearly defined, if we look at section 93—what is not additional content, what has to be looked at separately are television programs, as there could be spin-offs from those, and computer games that are produced to be played independently.

This a crucial area because one of the significant problems in the classification area is that you could have a film produced that can pass all of the tests and classifications, and that is fine, but the level of violence in computer games is extraordinary. This is an extremely significant industry for Australia because we are substantial players within it, but one of its critical problems is the level of violence. The whole question of the impact of that on young people in particular who are playing those games in an absorbed manner is fundamental.

People could take the easy way out and say: ‘Well, here’s a film and here’s all the stuff that is additional content; it is just associated with it. The computer games are just part of that whole generic bit.’ That would be the easy way out but it is the wrong way out. I commend the Attorney on the approach that is taken here because they need their own independent classification.

The gaming area which makes games that are associated with film content is not only extraordinarily expensive but also extraordinarily profitable. It is bigger, in terms of what Australia produces, the money that comes back into Australia and its importance, than our film industry. This was not the case some years ago, but it was becoming the case when I was deputy chair of our communications committee and we looked into the current and future problems involved in making games for Australia and the world, and at how we could best assist in that regard. There were two fundamental problems. One was the level of violence and the other was the fact that the necessary support for this industry simply was not great enough. But you need to understand just how significant it is and just how dynamic this area is.

The last area I want to speak about is something that the bill does not fully deal with but which it predicts. Again, this is a sensible approach to take. You really do need to be flexible in this area. As is often the case with whatever area you are looking at, people take what exists at a particular point in time and project it into the future. You cannot do that in multimedia, you cannot do it in IT, and you cannot do it in terms of distribution of content in a digital form. The fundamental thing that we are going to have to grapple with will be how we are affected by the fact that this is now such a worldwide issue.

The rise of Apple as a distributor of content through iTunes and its dominance in the music area is well known and understood. What is not as readily appreciated is that Apple has generated an immense revolution in the downloading of video content. It has done that with some material that it has locked up in agreements. On 10 January at the Moscone Centre in California, Apple made its biggest announcement for the year. It has partnered with Yahoo and Google. It has done other significant things in this area, including with Paramount Pictures and its movies. Apple is providing television shows directly for download at relatively low cost.

The impact in this area will be extremely significant. If your classification systems are fine, that is okay. However, alongside that is the whole phenomenon of YouTube—which has recently been bought—distributing material on the internet. Despite the New South Wales Leader of the Opposition thinking he is the first one to use YouTube to do things, Kevin Rudd and other people have already used it. This is a mechanism whereby people can put very short films onto the net, but already there have been significant problems with inappropriate material appearing. An international organisation runs it, and so it is beyond our direct reach. This will provide for the Attorney, the government and future governments a significant problem because they will need to go beyond our jurisdiction to an international set of arrangements, agreements or understandings to get our enforcement in the classification area extended to that area. The damage that can be done by uncontrolled direct download is significant in terms of not only piracy but all of the elements that are properly part of the Classification Board and the Classification Review Board.

In closing, I commend the Attorney and the department for the very efficient work that has been done in relation to this bill. I have no qualms whatsoever about the integration of the Office of Film and Literature Classification into his department. I am particularly pleased that on foot is an appreciation of not only the dynamic nature of modern multimedia and that the whole game has changed but also the need to make flexible, sound and sensible responses in the future to what is a very dynamic area.

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