Australia Censorship News

After taking a record number of public submissions, the Australian Law Reform Commission has now released its final discussion paper on a new Classification Scheme.

Most of what the ALRC has suggested makes a lot of sense, including the addition of new classification categories of C for Children, PG 8+ and T 13+ for teens. Dropping the M for Mature category also makes sense, as would removing the legal requirement to enforce age on the MA15+ classification. This is because trying to regulate age requirements on people accessing MA15+ material on a website would be impossible to enforce online.

What doesn't make sense is the suggestion that Australia's restricted publications (Category 1 and 2) both become X-rated. The last time I looked, the X rating was banned in most states. So why is the ALRC suggesting the modern day equivalent of book-burning for anything nude and rude on paper? Why would the federal government, in Section 9 of the report, seek to ban categories of books and magazines that have been around for 30 years?

It is also somewhat disturbing to see that, while the ALRC was being bold and brave about suggesting all these new classifications, when it came to the X classification they went weak at the knees and stated in Section 6: If the Australian government decided to keep the X classification ... Why would they not make a recommendation about this category as they have for many others? The fact is, they advised the federal government to introduce a new C for Children and T for Teen category. So why not recommend that X be legal in all jurisdictions as well, so they can achieve the truly uniform and consistent national scheme they say they want?

...Read the full article

Stephen Conroy, the Australian minister of Communications Blocking has remained stalwart in his support for Labor's hated mandatory internet blocking scheme in a debate on ABC TV.

He was asked whether Labor's support for the blocking was pointless, given that it may not have the numbers to get through Parliament.

Conroy answered that a review of the Refused Classification category of content still had to be undertaken before legislation was introduced to Parliament. He added:

The legislation will ultimately reflect the outcome of that review... for people to say it definitely won't be passed, the legislation hasn't been drafted, and that review hasn't taken place yet

You don't, simply because you've got a lot of criticism, say 'well I'm going to run away from that policy.

Other panelists were more wary. Independent Rob Oakeshott said he was in favour of personal responsibility in terms of internet use, but he would wait to see the legislation.

Shadow Innovation Minister Sophie Mirabella told the audience that the Coalition wouldn't support the policy because it wouldn't work, particularly as it was unable to block peer-to-peer traffic.

Australian Sex Party president Fiona Patton warned filter critics not to take the Coalition's opposition to the scheme for granted.(Shadow Treasurer) Joe Hockey may have said he won't support the filter as it stands, but certainly Tony Abbott out at Rooty Hill, of course, said that he would do whatever he could to stop people looking at filth, she said.

In July last year, Australian state, and territory censorship ministers reached an in-principle agreement to introduce an R18+ classification for video games in Australia.

At the time, the measure was championed by the former Federal Minister for Home Affairs Brendan O'Connor.

he has since moved to a new job during the federal government's ministerial reshuffle late last year, with former Minister for Defence Materiel Jason Clare named the new Federal Minister for Home Affairs.

Clare so far been silent on his intentions for the adult classification for games. Now, speaking to GameSpot AU, Clare's office has revealed that the minister will stick to the previously announced timeline for R18+ and will introduce the R18+ for games bill in the first session of this year's parliamentary sittings, due to commence on February 7.

However the Government lives on a parliamentary knife edge needing support from cross bench MPs. It is not yet clear whether the bill will get the necessary consensus.

Australia is currently consulting about proposals to apply censorship rules across all media. The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) are tasked with proposing censorship law that covers all media.

In a long and technical, but fascinating, response from Libertus, many aspects of applying censorship laws across the board are questioned. In particular it is pointed how onerous it can be for individuals or non commercial groups to be faced with commercial levels of fines for publishing material censored under vague definitions. Irene Graham writes:

The ALRC's proposals, if implemented, would significantly extend the breadth of existing Commonwealth law for the intended purpose of enabling criminal prosecution and penalisation of online content providers, including non-commercial content providers (i.e. average everyday Australians). Existing Commonwealth law concerning online content does not apply to content providers, it applies to designated content/hosting service providers.

The writer is shocked by ALRC proposals which, in effect, would make non-commercial online content providers criminally liable for inability to foresee a classification decision that would be made by a panel of members of the Classification Board (which is not even required to be unanimous, and a panel making a classification decision can be as few as 2 members).

...Read the full consultation response by Irene Graham of Libertus.net [pdf]

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has complained with the Australian broadcaster SBS about the British-made television series The Promise, which it says conveys anti-Jewish stereotypes.

In a letter to SBS, the Jewish organisation alleges that the series

promotes, endorses and reinforces demeaning stereotypes about Jews as a group. All of the principal Jewish characters (and thus by implication Jews generally) are portrayed negatively and, ultimately, without any redeeming virtues. They are cast as variously cruel, violent, hateful, ruthless, unfeeling, amoral, treacherous, racist and/or hypocritical.

The ancient libel that holds all Jews throughout history to be collectively guilty of killing Jesus has been segued into the equally ludicrous proposition that all Jews are collectively guilty of the wanton shedding of innocent blood, a staple of contemporary Palestinian propaganda. The series also panders to stereotypes about Jews being immoderately wealthy and having acquired their wealth unfairly. The cumulative effect of these consistently negative portrayals of all of the principal Jewish characters and of the series' numerous misrepresentations of the relevant historical background in a way that consistently casts Jews in a negative light is to demean Jews as a group.

The relevant historical events (and their misrepresentation) and the principal Jewish characters are vehicles for attributing negative traits to Jews generally across time and space. 'The Promise' utilizes and reinforces racist tropes about Jews that, but for a brief post-WWII respite, have been embedded in western civilization since pre-Christian times and are not in any way comparable to negative portrayals of other groups.

The four-part series The Promise, written and directed by British filmmaker Peter Kosminsky, tells a fictional story about Erin (played by actress Claire Foy), an 18-year-old British girl who visits her Israeli friend Eliza in Israel in 2005. Erin carries and progressively reads through the diary of her grandfather, Len, which describes Len's experiences while serving as a sergeant in the British army in the 1940s.

First screened in the UK in February 2011 and in France in March 2011, critics and Jewish organizations in both countries condemned the series. The Board of Deputies of British Jews also complained, but Ofcom, the UK's TV censor, said the program was not in breach of any of its guidelines.

The distributor of Steve McQueen's new film Shame has lashed out at Australia's classification board, saying the internationally acclaimed film doesn't deserve an R18+ rating.

Transmission Films general manager Courtney Botfield says she is disappointed the Australian Classification Board has stamped Shame with the rating, which restricts marketing and tends to dent box office takings.

The classification is harsh, she claims, given the film's level of explicit content and the absence of violence:

We were disappointed, we don't think the film is that terribly explicit to deserve an R rating.

Given that it was rated in a similar classification bracket in the US it was on the cards, but we were pretty confident it wouldn't get one.

In fact the film was rated adults only in both the UK (18 rating), and the US (NC-17 rating).

Botfield says some people will miss out seeing an important film because of restrictions on marketing. She explained:

Mainly it's the trailering. The trailer is automatically rated R and can only play with other R-rated films, of which there are none, so that key marketing tool just disappears.

Australian media companies are angry that immigration officials have pushed through new government media censorship that would ban them from showing video of asylum seekers in Australia.

The Australian Communication and Media Authority says television stations will no longer be allowed to show video of asylum seekers reaching the country by boat.

But media companies are crying foul, saying the the restrictions, implemented at the behest of immigration officials, amount to censorship.

Chris Warren, federal secretary of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, said this amounts to an effort to prevent asylum seekers from telling their stories to the Australian people: It's an unnecessary restriction, which will get in the way of Australians really understanding what asylum seekers go through. Warren said while there are valid concerns about privacy behind the measure, it's not appropriate for the immigration authorities to step in and, in a heavy-handed way, try to impose restrictions on the media.

Update: Bollox

5th January 2012. See press release from acma.gov.au

The Australian Communications and Media Authority seeks to correct inaccurate media reporting about its recently published Privacy Guidelines for Broadcasters 2011. Its publication concludes the first review of the ACMA's guidelines since their introduction in 2005.

Some media outlets have claimed that the guidelines are imposing new privacy restrictions on the electronic media, said ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman. This is simply not the case. The regulation of broadcasting content in Australia is largely set out in codes of practice developed by the television and radio industries themselves.

Privacy protections have long been embedded in these codes of practice. The ACMA's revised guidelines do not, and indeed cannot, of themselves create new obligations, and are only intended to assist licensees to comply with their own codes.

The industry codes require broadcasters to take account of both the rights of individuals to privacy and the (ultimately overriding) public interest. Nothing has changed in this regard from the ACMA's existing 2005 Privacy Guidelines. There is no new "media restriction;" there are no new "media rules".

A particular erroneous claim being made is that the guidelines restrict the coverage by the media of the arrival of asylum seekers to Australia.

In fact, the guidelines make no specific mention of asylum seekers, as claimed, nor do they create a new protection, namely that of seclusion, Chapman said.

The notion of seclusion has been around for a long time, has been well explored in the courts and was specifically referred to and accepted in an ACMA investigation report into a 2008 Ten News at Five broadcast. The concept was then explicitly included in the ACMA's draft guidelines released for public consultation in August 2011.