Miss Bartlett ‘a threat to freedom’

Press, 28 August 1979, Page 6

Miss Bartlett ‘a threat to freedom’

PA Napier New Zealand did not realise the danger Miss Patricia Bartlett posed to people’s freedom, the managing director of Penguin Books (N.Z.), Ltd, Mr G. Beattie, said in an address to the Hawke's Bay Play Centre Association conference in Napier. “So vociferous and indefatigable has she been that politicians have been influenced, and a law has been passed which again introduced dual censorship in New Zealand,” he said. “On the one hand we have an Indecent Publications Tribunal charged by the law to determine what is indecent, and on the other we have a woman who has formerly been both a nun and a schoolteacher who seems to consider herself better qualified to make judgments on indecency. “So great is the divergence between tribunal decisions on indecency and Miss Bartlett’s notions of pornography that as early as 1971 she was saying, ‘lndecent books are so prevalent in New Zealand that there is work for two full-time Indecent Publication Tribunals capable of handling 300 publications a year’.”

Mr Beattie said that in 1972 Miss Bartlett had influenced Parliamentarians, who saw her society as one that could influence votes and behaved accordingly, to pass an amendment to the act that increased the penalities, created new offences of strict liability, extended the period for bringing proceedings from six months to two years, and made it an offence to exhibit part only of a document even though the document as a whole was not indecent. “Sadly, the submissions made to the select committee were heard in secret and to this day access to them has not been available.” During the years that followed, Miss' Bartlett had continued her campaign against the pornography she seemed to think was flooding the country, Mr Beattie said. Miss Bartlett said it was surprising that Mr Beattie should make his remarks at this time while a Penguin Books publication was before the Indecent Publications Tribunal. “To my knowledge he has not made a similar attack against me before,” she said.

“I still maintain that there should be a full-tune , tribunal instead of the present part-time set up,” she said. “One can only believe the tribunal cannot speedily cope with the present situation. "For example, the tribunal’s finding No. 928 was not given until July this year when the hearing was on September 26, 1978.” Miss Bartlett said tha complement of the tribunal was five, but there had been no replacement for one member. Miss W. M. Rolleston, who retired last year. Frequently deci- 1 sions of the tribunal were now made by a quorum of three.The chairman of the tribunal is a Wellington barrister, Mr L. M. Greig. Other members are Mr D. Wylie, senior librarian at Victoria University, Miss Lauris Edmond, editor of the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association Journal, and Mrs H. B. Dick, of Oamaru. “Mr Beattie is completely astray when he refers to the submissions | to the select committee being made in secret. The press were there,” Miss Bartlett said.