Censorship in Australia

Essay from the year 2000 in the subject Politics - Region: Australia, New Zealand, grade: 63% (Credit), Monash University Melbourne (School for Social and Political Inquiry), course: Politics and the media in Australia, language: English, abstract: The debate about censorship takes place on various levels. Internet kids curse against governments who try to restrict access to Internet sites. Radical feminists want to ban every form of pornography as they believe it degrades and dehumanizes women. Liberals on the other hand call for the abolition of censorship because it violates the human right of freedom of speech and expression. Newspaper journalists and editors fear retaliation through defamation trials and by the almighty proprietors of the media organizations they are working for if they do not report along the mainstream. In this essay I will examine all these facets of the censorship debate. I will start with a history of censorship in Australia. Exemplary and due to restriction of space, I will focus merely on book censorship. Then will follow a discussion of two current issues in the debate: First, the argument surrounding the Australian government's attempt to restrict access to pornographic content in the internet by legislation. Second, the issue of pornography, censorship and freedom of speech. This will take place on a more general level and less related to current Australian problems. [...]