GEORGINA BEYER (Labour-Wairarapa): I am very, very pleased to take a brief call on the third reading of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Amendment Bill. I must express how impressed I am with the quality of the debate that has occurred this evening and with all the various views that have been shared about these important matters regarding censorship and pornography, and the greater penalties for offences that are provided for in the bill.

I planned to take a longer call because I could refer to my own problems with censorship in the past. I, too, was in a film once—a legitimate one—that ended up on television. It was censored and that delayed the programme going to air for a year, because apparently the subject matter was contrary to the public’s good taste. The subject matter was about a day in the life of a transsexual and a transvestite. It took a year for the chief of television of the day—and this was in the 1980s—to get it to air.

Sandra Goudie: Get over it!

GEORGINA BEYER: Exactly! Get over it. It did go to air and received five nominations for the 1987 film and television awards, including, I humbly say, one nomination for myself.

However, I do not want to trivialise the serious nature of this bill. I congratulate the members of the House who, by majority at least, are supporting the bill. I appreciate and respect the ACT party’s view. They are entitled to it. We may not agree with it, and obviously we do not on this particular matter, but nevertheless Mr Franks made himself clear. It is just that he left us seeing it as clearly as mud sometimes. I commend the bill to the House and hope that it proceeds speedily through the rest of its course.