Australia Censorship News

A censored version of The Peaceful Pill Handbook by Dr Philip Nitschke was awarded an adults only R18 certificate in May 2008.

It has just had the R18 reconfirmed by the Review Board, who dismissed a challenge brought by the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards and Right to Life New Zealand.

The author Dr Philip Nitschke has said the decision clears the way for a fresh attempt to get the book classified so it may be published in Australia where it is currently banned outright: We are talking to our Australian lawyers about lodging a copy of the New Zealand edition of the Handbook with the Australia Office of Film and Literature Classification, making use of the detailed the arguments outlined by the New Zealand Board of Review to justify re-classification here.

One Australian state has so many shops selling adult entertainment that a trade group has called on the government to limit their numbers.

Queensland has about 65% more sex shops now than it did two years ago, The Brisbane Sunday Mail reported. With 180 adult stores, Queensland has twice as many sex shops as Blockbuster video outlets.

EROS, the trade group, said capping the number of sex shops and regulating them more strictly would halt the proliferation of stores and allow the government to crack down on sales of illegal items. Queensland bans the sale of the most explicit DVDs and restricts the sale of some magazines.

Family First, a nutter group, also wants to limit sex shops, saying too many are opening in suburban areas: I've had so many families say they don't want their children confronted with these sexual images and issues in suburban areas, Family First Chairman Peter Findlay said.

Horror game Silent Hill: Homecoming has become the fourth game this year to be refused classification by Australia's censors.

The game, which was due for release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in November, is the sixth installment in the popular Silent Hill survival horror series published by Konami and features a soldier who returns from war to search for his missing brother.

Homecoming was refused classification by The Classification Board last week, presumably for excessive violence, and follows similar verdicts for Fallout 3, Shellshock 2: Blood Trails and Dark Sector.

No doubt the distributors will now edit the game to produce a suitably child friendly version to get an MA15+

The film was passed 18 uncut by the BBFC, the UK's game censor.

Jack Vaisman, CEO of Advanced Medical Institute, has started replacing 120 giant posters promoting longer lasting sex after the advertising watchdog upheld complaints.

The medical institute has swapped the word "sex" for the word "censored" in a cheeky swipe at the Advertising Standards Bureau.

Vaisman said: We have to comply with the Advertising Standards Bureau regulations and we decided that we would change the message and we appeal to the public through our interviews and asked if anyone could come up with a better substitute for the word 'sex'.

But wowsers have done it much cheaper after taking matters - and a roll of red vinyl - into their own hands at Stanwell Park, south of Sydney. They turned "sex" into "sox": It wasn't done for notoriety and nor are we wowsers, ... [BUT] ... we just got sick 'n' tired of our kids having to be subjected to 'sexual inadequacy' and 'limp-penis' adverts everyday when going past on their school bus.

The federal opposition wants access to pornographic pay-TV programs banned from Aboriginal communities.

The coalition will use the Senate to press for the ban even though the Rudd government had already rejected a similar proposal in the House of Representatives.

South Australian Liberal senator Cory Bernardi claimed watching pornography led to child abuse.

The coalition supports a blanket ban on pornography on pay TV, he told the Senate during a debate on a government bill which deals with aspects of the Northern Territory intervention.

The coalition also believed the permit system, which traditionally had restricted access to remote Aboriginal communities, had not worked. The system was abandoned by the previous Howard government during its dramatic intervention into the Northern Territory's remote indigenous communities last year. The government is seeking to restore the system.

Senator Bernardi criticised the need for journalists to obtain ministerial approval before visiting certain communities. Problems within those communities could be addressed, if people knew about them.

Queensland's Office of Fair Trading has prosecuted two adult shops for selling banned films and magazines.

Attorney-General Kerry Shine said Costa George and Con Ange, the proprietors of Brisbane store Everything Adult, were each fined $5,000.

Merlaway Pty Ltd, proprietor of Naughty but Nice, at Capalaba in Brisbane's east, was fined $2,000 for the sale and display of banned publications and films.

Office of Fair Trading inspectors found the banned items on sale supposedly while responding to consumer complaints, Mr Shine said.

The items were then sent to the Commonwealth Classification Board, which found the DVDs classified as X18+ and RC, Refused Classification, while the magazines were classified as Category 2 Restricted. Items with these classifications are banned from sale in Queensland.

Shine said the Office of Fair Trading took breaches seriously and would continue to carry out spot checks.

Tissue Sir? A good job you brought your own porn The Qantas selection is bollox

Qantas has shelved plans to offer live internet access on its A380 planes from next month as American Airlines comes under fire from nutters and flight attendants for allowing passengers to surf porn websites.

Qantas will instead offer only a limited selection of what it calls cached internet content and access to web-based email and chat services.

A Qantas spokeswoman said the internet plans had been paired back due to logistical and regulatory issues encountered by its connectivity provider, OnAir. The airline said the full internet service was now scheduled to be available later in 2009.

The lack of a full internet service will most likely disappoint many passengers who will have to make do with a limited selection of cached internet content. Qantas has refused to give further details of what content will be included - other than qantas.com - or how much the service would cost.

Laptop power sockets will be provided for every passenger. USB ports, also built into every seat, will potentially allow passengers to access multimedia content from music players and portable hard drives through the seat-back screens.

Update: Profanity Filtering

18th October

Unlike American Airlines and Delta, the scope of Qantas' filtering seems to go far beyond just pornography.

Restrictions may include sites that contain violence, profanity, nudity and other content we consider may be offensive to our customers, said a Qantas spokesman who did not respond when asked if the filtering would include sites that criticised Qantas.

The Eros Foundation, Australia's adult industry trade association, has called on the Australian government to overhaul its mandatory nationwide classification system for publications.

Eros CEO Fiona Patten said that less than 5% of adult publications currently sold in Australia are classified and in many cases importers of adult magazines cannot afford the government's fees for classification.

The cost to classify a publication ranges from $400-$500. Patten said: Many adult publications are imported in small numbers. If an importer wants to bring in 10 copies of a specialist magazine they have to load the cover price of that magazine by up to $40 just to recover the classification costs, so, clearly, they cannot comply with the law or they will go broke.

When more than one business imports the same publication, the company that classifies it first clears it for all companies. This makes many companies reluctant to pay the classification fees.

Patten said that in the past, explicit adult magazines were not classified but were only allowed to be sold from age restricted adult shops.

Censorship laws are inconsistent in Australia, Patten pointed out. In West Australia, Category 2 explicit magazines can be sold legally by minors working at newsstands, a situation Eros has challenged. In Queensland, R-rated films are legal but the equivalent Category 1 Restricted magazines are illegal.

It's time the government reformed the classification scheme to create a powerful uniform adult category called Non Violent Erotica (NVE), that spans film, publications and computer games, that all fall under the same set of guidelines, Patten said: The public has no idea about the differences between an R- or X-rated film, a Category 1 or 2 Restricted magazine and an MA rated online or computer game.

Patten's recommendation is that NVE magazines in Category 2 and X rated films should only be available to adults, purchased from adult shops.

Speaking to Edge, games make Bethesda has explained what it calls a “misconception” regarding the classification of Fallout 3 in the Australian region. Edge has also learned that due to concerns and issues raised in the process of international classification, Fallout 3 will not contain real world drug references in any territory.

Fallout 3 was originally refused classification by the Australian Censor Board, citing among other reason the in-game use of Morphine in order to ignore limb pain. According to the censor's guidelines, material promoting or encouraging proscribed drug use is banned.

In mid-August, the OFLC announced that a revised version of the game had been granted a rating in Australia, thanks to edits that changed the context of the in-game drug use.

While it has been assumed that these changes would only be in place in the Australian release of the game, Edge has been told by Bethesda vice president of PR Peter Hines that there will be no differences between the version that releases in Australia and the versions that will release in other territories, including Europe and the US.

Hines said, An issue was raised concerning references to real world, proscribed drugs in the game, and we subsequently removed those references and replaced them with fictional names. To avoid confusion among people in different territories, we decided to make those substitutions in all versions of the game, in all territories.

Australian nutters say Wikipedia has crossed the line by allowing graphic videos and photographs of sexual acts on its articles.

While school children used to look up dirty words in dictionaries, searching for the same phrases on Wikipedia can result in images and videos of masturbation, hardcore sex and orgies.

On one entry, an 18-second video of a man ejaculating appears on the page - without any warnings or age verification.

On another page, various photos from the sets of both a heterosexual and homosexual hardcore pornography films are featured. Several images of masturbation appear on another page.

Childwise head Bernadette McMenamin says sex education is a good thing , ...BUT... displaying sexualised images in an online encyclopaedia crosses the line: Do we really need to see a woman masturbating on Wikipedia? Do we really need to see so many seconds of ejaculation?

According to Wikipedia's policies, there is no censorship in the online encyclopaedia: Obviously inappropriate content (such as an irrelevant link to a shock site, or clear vandalism) is usually removed quickly, the site says: However, some articles may include objectionable text, images, or links where they are relevant to the content - such as the articles about the penis or pornography.

Internet Industry Association boss Peter Coroneos says there is no need for moral hysteria over graphic images if they are used in context.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) says it can only begin investigating the images and videos if a complaint is received.

In a move that could reignite the divisive children-in-art scare, a photograph by artist Bill Henson of a naked girl has been reproduced on the internet and in an art auction catalogue.

Auction house Lawson-Menzies has displayed the work, Untitled 1985/86, in publicity for the sale in two weeks.

The photograph depicts a naked girl, apparently a teenager but whose age is unknown, lying on sheets, her legs parted. The girl appears to be sleeping. Henson created the work in 1985-86 and it was exhibited in 1989.

The National Gallery of Victoria and the Albury Regional Art Gallery are believed to own works from the same series.

Lawson-Menzies' national head of art Tim Abdallah said last night the photograph belonged to a Melbourne collector who had decided to sell.

The director of the National Association for the Visual Arts [NAVA], Tamara Winikoff, said: Bill Henson's work has been assessed by the Classification Board on the basis of community complaints and the board agreed it was perfectly fine to be seen by the general community and it didn't break the law. That should be the end of it.

NAVA is currently working on an arts censorship guide to clarify people's rights and responsibilities. The Australia Council is also developing a set of protocols to address the depiction of children in art works, exhibitions and publications that receive government funding. The protocols will be in place by January 1 next year, and adherence to them will be a condition of receiving Australia Council funding.

Alexandra Greene is a qualified lawyer on the Australian Film Classification Board since 2003.

In her role Ms Greene spends each working day watching about 300 minutes of material, taking notes every two minutes to pick up each instance of nudity, profanity and violence before classifying the product as G, PG, M, MA, R, X or refusing it classification.

The board censors and makes classification decisions about films, computer games and publications

About 16% of all the material that she and the other members of the board have to watch is what they call "adult product".

You get used to the adult product, you get used to seeing it and you know what to expect but I that makes you the opposite (of desensitised). You know what you're supposed to look out for and when it comes up it jumps out at you, she said: It does get repetitive; it's the same old thing. They go through the same scenes, vignettes and motions. They can only go so far with it, there is not much more they can invent. It's one of the easier things to do because all we really have to look out for is violence and some fetishes that aren't permitted.

Ms Greene claims her role is not to censor but inform people about what they are about to watch and if necessary restrict the content from being viewed: You know what the community is going to find offensive on a general level .

People should be able to watch or read what they like ...BUT... we do need to protect people and children from unsolicited material, or at least give them the choice if they want to watch it.

I've got a pretty strong stomach so I haven't had any really bad reactions. I had one which was was an internet site a few years ago which was a live beheading. It caught me by surprise. That was quite confronting obviously. I got a physical reaction to it. I felt quite sick but I just went for a walk around the block and spoke to a few people about it.

But the double entendres in children's films such as Shrek and The Cat in the Hat' s title character calling a garden tool " a dirty hoe" tread a line that can be hard to define.

I saw an interview with (Scottish comedian) Ronnie Barker where he said double entendres were OK because the children couldn't understand it and the adults would get a laugh. But now it's that adults get offended because they're worried their kids might understand.

ACMA finds that coarse language in Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares exceeded M classification guidelines

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has found that Channel Nine breached the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice on 6 March 2008, by broadcasting Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares – Secret Garden with an incorrect M (Mature) classification. The finding arose out of a complaint about coarse language in the program.

ACMA found that the program contained both aggressive coarse language and very coarse language, neither of which is permitted in M-classified programs. While the code allows frequent coarse language in M-classified programs (where it is particularly important to the storyline or program context) ACMA determined it was not justified in this case.

ACMA concluded that the program should have been classified MA (Mature Audience). Programs which are classified MA are considered suitable for viewing only by persons aged 15 years or over in view of the intensity and/or frequency of coarse language or other material contained in the program. Such programs must be broadcast in the later MA time zone.

‘The code establishes a scale for the level and amount of coarse language that is permissible in programs at each classification level, and requires programs that contain more impactful coarse language to be classified appropriately.

Both the broadcaster and the Nine Network conceded that the program contained very coarse language that is not permissible in M-classified programs, and have confirmed that the very coarse language contained in the program will not be broadcast in any future programs.