Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Violence is an enormous problem in the community. I am not going to draw the minister further on this, because it will not get me anywhere, but the point I make is that there is an attitude of accommodation for gratuitous violence that goes way beyond that which goes to non-violent sexually explicit material. That is a cultural thing. That is a Western and American cultural thing. It makes violence an entertainment. It makes huge amounts of money for some people. Whatever the classification system here is, the public presentation of the need for this legislation has been all about pornography and not about violence when it comes to the material that is to be classified and prohibited. I think the government should look at that again. I am concerned about the impact of gratuitously violent material, masquerading as entertainment, on the whole of the nation, and the lack of restraint by government on explicitly violent material as against explicitly sexual material.