Under new Government censorship laws, a Phillip Adams interview with Osama bin Laden could be seen as an incitement to terrorism

WHEN the Big Brother scandal broke last year and grainy images of sexual high jinks started appearing on the telly in the wee small hours, John Howard's colleagues became uneasy. Sensing the rising angst, the show's producers censored themselves on the free-to-air medium but then upped the ante on their website.

 It's time, was the message that Howard then sent to Communications Minister, Helen Coonan. Not for any soft core, pinko regulation though. No. It was time to cast a very big conservative net over all electronic and online media. Then drag it together under one technological platform where it could be torched and purged, beaten and bleached, for decadence and dissidence of all sorts.

A couple of weeks ago Coonan issued an exposure draft of the Content Services Bill to a handful of players and, with no consultation, prepared to introduce it into the present session of parliament.

 However, alarm bells have started ringing in many quarters as the intent and irrationality of this bill becomes increasingly apparent.

 The censorship implications are enormous. The bill takes the view that, very soon, all our media will end up being transmitted through the ether and either viewed on a big screen at the end of the living room, or on a mobile phone in your hand.

 Telephones, televisions, pay TV, internet, pay-per-view and even the security camera at the front door will all pour through this one portal on to your big or little screen.

 What makes this bill so dangerous to the freedom of speech and ideas is that it seeks to censor the screen or the technology, rather than the content itself.

 It does this by making content that is presently legal in other forms, illegal when viewed on a screen. A wide range of books, magazines, videos, DVDs and films that are legal at the moment will be illegal under the draft bill.

 The reason for this is that it makes censorship determinations for all media using only film censorship guidelines. So if you want to read a book or magazine online or on a mobile phone, it gets rated using motion picture guidelines and not publications guidelines.

 The rub is that no R18+ rated material will be allowed unless there are strict age verification systems in place and if you dare to put up or send currently legal X18+ rated material, then you go to jail.

 The Packer stable of adult magazines that are legal in newsagents around Australia in plastic bags will all be rated X18+ when judged using film guidelines and therefore banned under the bill. The Australian Publishers Association is angry and alarmed that it was not consulted about a change to the law that could see thousands of books outlawed just because they are read on a computer or a mobile phone.

 Why would a federal government suddenly ditch a 30-year publications classification scheme and posit the irrational claim that actually books and magazines are now to be considered the same as films?

 The madness doesn't stop there. Spoken-word radio programs that are now broadcast under the Community Broadcasting Codes of Practice, will be censored as films when they are pod cast or listened to from a website or remote storage device. Since when did a radio broadcast have any resemblance to a film?

 The bill also changes the way that the new terrorism laws may affect media. For example, let's say Phillip Adams on ABC Radio's Late Night Live manages to get an interview with Osama bin Laden from his cave in the Pakistani wilderness. The original broadcast on the ABC under the relevant Code of Practice would allow Adams the freedom to ask bin Laden almost anything and there would be no threat of fines or jail terms.

 However, if the broadcast was podcast later on from the ABC's website, those codes of practice would no longer apply, and an invitation from Adams to bin Laden to deliver a message to the Prime Minister, could under certain circumstances, be seen as an incitement to terrorism.

 Premium rate and sexy talk on mobile phones will also be judged using film guidelines. But the real obscenity in this bill is the moral distinction that it draws between sex and violence.

 The bill makes it legal to show high levels of real and simulated violence in the R18+ category but illegal to show the explicit nonviolent sex of the X18+ category.

 It allows people to see the bloody R-rated aftermath of both real and simulated terrorist attacks but then, disingenuously, tries to ban the politics behind terrorism. Both of these upper classification ratings are legal federal classifications and both are age restricted to 18 and over.

 Coonan puts her personal morality on the line here by giving one of these 18+ categories the nod and the other the flick. To be consistent and credible, she has to either ban both or allow both.

 By my count, up to 65 per cent of Howard's Government members are either publicly stated or born-again Christians. According to Tony Abbott almost half the federal cabinet are Catholics. The morally devout Lyons Forum group within the Coalition has, in the past, claimed up to half the Government as members.

 Many Australians will see the Content Services Bill as reflecting the views of these groups in government and not the wider community.

 How strange that Coonan used to be one of the leading lights in the now defunct free speech group within the Liberal Party, the John Stuart Mill group. Her natural voice is what is badly needed at this time and not the dead hand of intolerance and bigotry that lurks in other corners of cabinet.