Porn, laws ‘ineffective, unworkable’

Press, 26 September 1988, Page 6

Porn, laws ‘ineffective, unworkable’

PA Wellington Laws relating to pornography are ineffective, unworkable and must be replaced by a new law, according to an Anti-Pornography Conference, held in Wellington on Saturday.

The conference aimed to reach a consensus on key questions such as the effects of pornography, the current laws, defining pornography and what law was needed to deal with, pornography, said Ms Trish Mullins, spokesperson for Women Against Pornography. About 30 women attended the conference representing organisations including the Y.W.C.A., the Labour Party, the Women’s Division of Federated Farmers, Rape Crisis, HELP, Women’s Refuge, the Nurses’ Union, the Nurses’ Association, the Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. “Women agreed that pornography is a violation of women’s basic rights and a form of sex discrimiation that endorses and reinforces the existing

power imbalance between women and men,” Ms Mullins said. The conference proposed a law defining pornography as any form of material with sexual connotations which subordinates women. Pornography would include material that presented women as sex objects, supposedly as enjoying rape or humiliation or which sexualised the degradation of women, the conference said. It recommended an anti-pornography tribunal to replace the current film censor, Video Authority and Indecent Publications Tribunal. The tribunal would view all films and set up a system for videos, books and other material to ensure that pornography was not available. “Women recommended that teams of people

round the country be responsible for finding pornography through random checks, complaints and investigations,” said Ms Mullins. As well as outlawing pornography, any new law should enable women to seek compensation for effects of pornography and to get injunctions to stop its distribution, the conference said. This idea was proposed in the United States with the Minneapolis Ordinance and has been taken up by women round the world. “The conference consensus proposal will be written up and organisations will be approached to sign it. The proposal will then go to the Ministerial Committee of Inquiry as well as to lobby M.P.s and Ministers,” Ms Mullins said.