Adult Industry in Australia Calls for Total Ban on Adult Films

Following police raids on seven adult shops in Kings Cross yesterday, the Eros Association has challenged the NSW government to criminalise the sale and purchase of X18+ rated films in the state or regulate all aspects of the trade in line with the federal government’s classification scheme.

Under federal government laws, the sale, purchase and possession of classified X18+ films are all legal. Only the sale of X18+ films is illegal in NSW, with purchase and possession still legal.

Eros CEO, Fiona Patten, said that the way the law currently stood meant that there was massive confusion in the public mind over the legality of the product with police officers raiding adult shops and charging shops owners one day and going back to a similar shop to buy films for their own personal use the following week.

“There is nothing illegal in police officers buying X18+ rated films from adult shops and taking them home”, she said. “Magistrates and even politicians are regular clients at many Sydney adult shops”, she said, “However the law sets up a dangerous and grossly unfair situation in criminalizing only one side of the transaction which penalizes the shop owner and no else. It takes two to tango”, she said.

Ms Patten said that police officers, magistrates and politicians were no different to any other community sector in that they all liked to buy and watch X18+ rated films. In 2002, a La Trobe University survey showed that 26% of Australians regularly purchased adult films. A 2006 AC Neilson survey found that 76% of Australians believed that X18+ rated films should made available on a restricted basis throughout Australia.

She said that adult shop owners were being penalized and scapegoated for the public’s interest and involvement in the X film trade in NSW and that the only way to set up a fair system was to either regulate all aspects of the trade or criminalise them all.

Ms Patten challenged Liberal leader Peter Debnam to show some leadership on the issue -having regard to the fact that 25% of adults in most electorates would be buyers of federally classified, X 18+ films. Over five million of these films are sold each year in NSW.

“Philosophically Mr Debnam would clearly be supporting Mr Howard’s censorship policies on these matters rather than the current outmoded NSW government position”, she said.