Sydney ‘“Girlie” Magazines Ruled Not Indecent

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31330, 29 March 1967, Page 8

Sydney ‘“Girlie” Magazines Ruled Not Indecent

(Special Crspdt. N.Z.P.A.) SYDNEY, March 28. A recent ruling by the New South Wales Appeal Court that photographs of the uncovered female body could not today be regarded as Indecent has given a fillip to publishers of Sydney’s growing wave of satirical and “girlie” magazines. The Court’s decision came as the State Government was drawing up a bill to prohibit the street-corner publications, which specialise in nude and near-nude photographs of women. The magazines, with names like “Censor,” “Obscenity” and “King’s Cross Whisper,” have all appeared in the last three years, and street newsstands prominently displaying them are a feature of Sydney life guaranteed to make a New Zealander stop in his tracks.

The Court of Appeal said in its recent judgment: “We cannot conceive that a depiction of the uncovered female bosom can today be regarded as indecent in the sense of affronting the sexual modesty of average persons.” The Court added:' “In pictorial publications, upon the stage in a number of shows in recent years, and in moving picture films shown generally in the community, the uncovered female breast has become something commonly depicted.

“How can it now be said that all that is indecent?” The Court, by a two-to-one majority decision, quashed convictions and fines imposed

by a Sydney Magistrate on four men charged with publishing indecent matter. The men included the editors and publishers of “Censor” and “Obscenity.” After strong protests from some sections of the community about the recent flood of this type of magazine—and a number of Appeal Court reversals of Magistrates’ judgments on them—the New South Wales Chief Secretary, Mr Eric Willis, announced that he would introduce an “Adult Publications Bill.” He said that, under the bill, a magazine or paper declared to be “for adults only” would not be allowed to be sold on the streets at all. Further, such a publication could not be sold in a shop to anyone under 16 years of age. Mr Willis said that undue emphasis on sex, drug addiction, horror or cruelty would cause a publication to be “declared.” He added that “recognised dailies, Sunday newspapers and magazines” would be exempted. The proposed bill has been widely attacked, especially by editorials in “recognised newspapers,” as impracticable and an unjust form of censorship. Meanwhile the publishers of “Censor,” which sells about 40,000 copies, are still before the Courts. They have been charged with obscenity and indecency on every one of the eight issues to date. They were acquitted on the first charge and won an appeal against conviction on the second.

The biggest selling of the “sex sheets,” as they have been called, is the “King’s Cross Whisper,” which claims

a print run of 135,000 for its three-weekly issues. The “Whisper” has also had a chequered run through the Courts since it first appeared on New Year’s Eve, 1964, but it has never been charged with obscenity or indecency. Street sellers have been summonsed for being unlicensed, its publishers fined for failing to register it as a publication and a distributor charged under the Motor Traffic Act with displaying advertisements on a private vehicle. An apt comment on the new-found freedom was made by a cartoonist in a Sydney newspaper. The scene was a book stall liberally covered with “girlie” magazines and lurid newspaper placards. A grey-haired assistant said to a long-haired and bespectacled student: “The thoughts of Mao Tse-tung? Good gracious, no! Nothing subversive here!”