‘Pornographer’s delight’ — Bartlett

Press, 15 February 1989, Page 6

‘Pornographer’s delight’ — Bartlett

PA Wellington The report on pornography is “a pornographer’s delight,” says the morals campaigner, Miss Patricia Bartlett. Miss Bartlett, secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards, said yesterday the report encouraged the legalisation of hard-core pornography. “The committee has given its blessing to legalise pornography. It only prohibits child pornography, sexual and extreme violence and a few rare acts ”

Miss Bartlett said the committee expressed no concern about the flood of pornography circulating the country. She was concerned the report made no mention of A.I.D.S, which could be spread if people copied acts shown in such pornography. Miss Bartlett said the recommendation that the Indecent Publications Tribunal amalgamate with the Video Recording Authority and the Film Censor would lower the tribunal’s standards to those of the other two bodies. The seven criteria the report

listed were “nothing new.” The stricter tripartite test that guided the tribunal’s censorship of pictures and magazines was ignored. “The good work done by the Indecent Publications Tribunal will be thrown out the window.”

Miss Bartlett said the report had strayed from its terms of reference and had become a “women’s libbers’ report,” for example the recommendation that women occupy half of primary school principals’ jobs.

“These aren’t in their terms of reference. They were supposed

to clean up pornography. “Some of the things I can hardly believe,” Miss Bartlett said, referring to a recommendation that the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council urgently investigate funding women’s erotica. She said the report and the possibility the Government could implement it left her group and its campaign against pornography “out in the cold.”

Miss Bartlett also opposed recommendations allowing wider teaching of sex education and contraception in schools.