The Press TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1972. Censorship bill should be deferred

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33049, 17 October 1972, Page 16

The Press TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1972. Censorship bill should be deferred

The secretive handling of the Indecent Publications Amendment Bill has been one of the disappointments of the Parliamentary session. Within a few days of the end of the session the Statutes Revision Committee has returned the bill to the House with minor amendments; yet only members of the committee and persons who gave evidence on the bill know what happened at the committee’s hearings. The same may be said of much other legislation that goes before Select Committees, and this bill has not been the most important item before Parliament; but the bill deals with very debatable questions and concerns a topic about which there is much 111-informed prejudice. The petitions that invited the Government to Initiate the bill were considered in open hearings last year. Strong objections were lodged against the ideas that were incorporated in the bill. The Department of Justice itself opposed one major proposal for the bill: that there be a form of temporary censorship before the Indecent Publications Tribunal considers publications. The department' said that this would be a breach of the principle of presumption of innocence. It also said that if the proposed change in censorship were introduced the department would become much more cautious in submitting publications to the tribunal and in recommending the Minister of Justice to authorise others to submit publications for rulings. The Booksellers’ Association outlined some of its objections to the bill this year before the Statutes Revision Committee began its hearings. The association threw serious doubt on the alleged need to amend the law.

In spite of these and other submissions the bill has been returned to the House unchanged in essentials. The members of the committee who support the bill owe citizens, from whom knowledge of the formal submissions has so far been kept, a convincing explanation of why an important principle of law has been laid aside. They should justify their decision to give so little weight to other arguments against the bill. Better still, the Government should defer the bill for more leisurely, and open, consideration of the evidence put before the committee. If this course were adopted the probability is that the bill would be dropped.