David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

Completely removing this ‘directly praises’ element of ‘advocates’ is unacceptable. This would be an important tool in the fight to ensure that material that, through its praise of heinous acts, might encourage the naive and impressionable to commit similar acts. Concerns have been expressed about the possible effect of this provision on popular culture movies, such as Braveheart or Michael Collins. However, other safeguards ensure an appropriate balance in making classification decisions—namely, that the praise in this instance must be direct and not done merely as part of public discussion, debate, entertainment or satire. Obviously, this amendment is unacceptable to the government.

Question negatived.