As reported by XBIZ, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who is calling for the ban, said the situation is a "national emergency" during an address to the Australian Parliament last week.
Eros Foundation is an advocacy organization that supports the adult industry in Australia, similar to the Free Speech Organization’s role in the U.S. adult industry.
The Australian Christian Lobby, which endorses widening the ban on pornography to include the city of Canberra, also has been criticized by the Eros Foundation.
"The Prime Minister has been very badly advised about the situation on the ground and is making a huge mistake for the purposes of trying to assure the community that he is doing something," Eros Foundation CEO Fiona Patten said in the press release.
According to Patten, the government is confusing the issue by trying to ban legal pornographic materials, but that the real concerns stem from illegal pornographic material, often featuring violent content, which is being marketed in the Aboriginal areas by “rogue” content distributors.
“We were the first ones to alert government and the authorities to the fact that banned pornography was turning up on these communities, so what do they do? Ban the legal material and forget about the bad stuff,” Patten said. “No wonder they are not making a dent on the problem.”
The commissioned report concluded that satellite TV provider Austar and multi-media network SBS were probably the "main sources of porn in the community," and also stated the Aboriginal people were more interested in violent American gangster movies and video clips. The Prime Minister’s ban does not address that type of content.
Under the Australian rating system, legal material includes R-rated and X/18+ films, as well as certain categories of books and printed material. It does not include Refused Classification material or materials with sexually violent content.
The foundation claims pirate vendors from the city of Darwin are selling illegal content to the Aborigines for as little as $5 per DVD.
"The federal government should be prosecuting these rogue operators and stem the flow at its source rather than try and place unworkable bans on certain geographic locations," Patten said. "People in these communities do not send $50 checks to Canberra operators for classified X-rated ‘couples’ films when they can buy $5 banned films from Darwin."
Foundation spokesman Robbie Swan added, "For four years we've been giving them intelligence and information about these traders in illegal pornography in Darwin who were the ones who were sending these extremely cheap discs into the communities, and nothing has happened. For the Prime Minister and the Christian Lobby to say that R- rated and X-rated material from Canberra is the problem is just a monumental lie."
