Action Australia

"We congratulate the federal government on its action to protect Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory from child sex abuse - but it is 17 years late," Roslyn Phillips, research officer for Festival of Light Australia, a family values advocacy group, said today.

"Seventeen years ago our 'Festival Focus' paper (August 1990) reported the journey to Canberra by four Aboriginal pastors including Cecil Grant of Albury and Bob Brown of Adelaide, in late May that year.

Their urgent message to federal MPs was: "Please ban X-rated videos. They are causing the genocide of our people, especially in remote areas." But no one in the Hawke government listened.

Six years later John Howard went to an election with a promise to ban X-rated videos, but did not keep his promise.

Pastor Bob Brown of the Wiradjuri people in south west NSW, now living in SA, told 'Focus' that a 1990 study by Professor Judith Atkinson on violence in Aboriginal communities found that alcohol, pornographic videos and alienation had led to a very high rate of violence and sexual violence affecting 90% of Aboriginal families living in trust areas in Queensland.

A federal government report quoting Professor Atkinson's study had omitted the section on pornographic videos, but did say:

"Young men are raping older women. Older men are abusing young girls, who sometimes require surgical treatment ... More women have died in one Queensland community alone than all the deaths in custody in that state."

X-rated videos were allowed into Australia by the Hawke government in 1984.

Outback communities, with no access to free-to-air TV, have been paying thousands of welfare dollars each year to rent pornographic material from Fyshwick in the ACT on a regular basis.

The result has been devastation - with children as well as adults acting out what they have seen, and abusing other children.

"We applaud the federal government's intention to ban X-rated videos and DVDs in the Northern Territory," Mrs Phillips said.

"It is better late than never.

Banning X-rated material in the Northern Territory is a step in the right direction. But the government must also ban the sale and rental of this material from the ACT, including the mail order business, to truly protect Aboriginal and white children in communities throughout Australia."

For further comment, contact:

Mrs Roslyn Phillips, BSc DipEd
Research Officer,
Festival of Light Australia
Phone 1300 365 965, or 08 8264 5398, or 0400 284 024

Email rhp@fol.org.au or

Richard Egan, national policy officer,
phone 0416 148 008;
Festival of Light Australia
National office
4th floor, 68 Grenfell Street,
Adelaide
SA 5000

Phone 1300 365 965
Email office@fol.org.au
Website www.fol.org.au