First published in Severed Head #13.
Written 10/1/1997 and reproduced here exactly as printed.
Main Source: Shocking Cinema, Edited by Phil Edwards.

What follows is a 'time-line' showing the main censorship-related events that have occurred in Australia over the last 100 years. Like the often-revised horror time-lines constructed by the Tabula Rasa crew, this one is merely as accurate as I can make it with the material currently at hand. A more complete and correct version may appear in the next Skintomb, but for now I hope that this first attempt provides a brief yet coherrant historical overview of censorship in this country.

1908: The New South Wales government sets up Australia's first formal censorship guidelines under the Theatre and Public Halls Act. This was done in response to the perception that films were causing a rise in juvenile delinquency.

1914: Following NSW's example, South Australia legislates its own censorship guidelines. Presumably the other states ran without formal censorship until 1917.

1917: To counter-act variations between the guidelines in each state, a central body called the Commonwealth Film Censorship Board is established by the Federal government under the Customs Act. The details of this legislation and the make-up of the board are not known.

1928: The government attempts to refine the censorship mechanism further by installing a three-person censorship board, led by a Chief Censor, and a three-person appeals board. After a mad scramble during which 1000 applications were evaluated, the role of Australia's Chief Censor went to Methodist lay-preacher Creswell O'Reilly. The establishment of governmental censorship in Australia contrasts strongly with the self-regulating US system, which was started in the late 1920's by the heads of ten major film studios. Their plan to control censorship from within the industry back-fired when the guy they hired, Will H. Haines, went on a 23-year self-righteous ego trip similar to Creswell's term. It is clear that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) of today owes much of its prejudicies and rubber logic to Haines's outrageously moral restrictions. But that's another story.

1928 to 1941: Chief Censor Creswell O'Reilly and his board go ape-shit and ban many movies, including Dawn, Klondike Annie (starring Mae West), Applause (it contained chourus girls), Compulsory Hands, Cape Forlorn, The Ladies Man (sexual overtones), White Cargo (interracial theme), The Five Year Plan (discussed communism),All Quiet on the Western Front, Gang Bullets, Each Dawn I Die, Hell's Kitchen (three US ganster films), The King and the Chorus Girl, The Brith of a Baby ("not in the public interest"), Green Pastures, Susan and God (blasphemy), Reefer Madness and Of Mice and Men (sex and violence in combination). O'Reilly was frequently criticised for his decisions.

1942: For the first time horror films suffer heavy censorship at the hands of the new Chief Censor, Mr. J. O. Alexander. His bias against horror films, which were usually (and amazingly) passed by O'Reilly, caused several old classics to be outlawed: The Monster and the Girl, The Man with two Lives, The Invisible Ghost, and King Kong, Frankenstein, Dracula plus their sequeals were banned when they were resubmitted under the new classification system. The same fate befell all subsequently released horror movies.

1956: The censorship board is increased in number from three to five members to cope with TV programmes. Adult shows such as Sunset Strip, Wagon Train and 77 Sunset Strip are pruned and santitised for our television audience's consumption, as was The Outer Limits and Boris Karloff's Thriller.

1957: Mr. Alexander is appointed Appeal Censor and Mr. C.J. Campbell from Customs becomes Chief Censor. The tight restrictions remain.

1964 to 1970: Mr. R. J. Prowse is appointed Chief Censor and Campbell goes into the Appeals Board. During the liberal 1960's, the public realised that many high-quality films were being banned: The Miracle, Viridiana, La Dolce Vita, Satyricon, The Silence,Blow Up and Zabriskie Point for example. Penthouse, Playboy and Mayfair are declared prohibited imports and books by Harold Robbins and Ian Flemming were cut.

1971: Customs Minister Don Chip kicks-off the development of a new classification system, which includes the much-needed R rating for adult content. Movies that were once banned, including the 1930's moster classics, are gradually released. The X rating is later introduced to cope with the upsurge in hardcore porn. Janet Strickland is one of the new censors appointed by Don Chip.

1974: Janet Strickland becomes Deputy Chief Censor and remains in that position for three years before moving on to the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal.

1980: Janet Strickland is appointed Chief Censor. It is said, even by Strickland herself, that under her control Australia experienced its greatest period of freedom.

1984 (?): A governmental conference is held, resulting in the later abolition of X rated material in most Australian states. Ownership of hardcore porn remains legal.

1986: Janet Strickland resigns as Chief Censor. It is not know who took her place.

1988: Former journalist John Joseph Dickie, born 4th January 1941 becomes Chief Censor after working in the Attorney-Gerneral's department for 14 years. 1st February 1997 marked his nineth year in the top spot. Strickland has since been reported in the press as being critical of the Board's decisions under Dickie's leadership.

1989: Consumer Advice comments are placed beside ratings symbols on every non-G classified item. Horror films are most often accompanied by "Horror Effects" or simply "Horror" as opposed to "Low/Medium/High Level Violence". The number of complaints about classification ratings from the public drops.

1990: Gail Malone and the Queensland Film Board of Review, which had banned 174 films since 1974, for instance Dawn of the Dead, Near Dark, Prison, Day of the Dead, The Toxic Avenger, Re-Animator and the M rated A Nightmare on Elm Street III, are abolished when the new Labour State Premier Wayne Goss is outraged that the Board banned an already censored version of Bad Taste after a three-week run in cinemas. Isolated cases of State censorship still occur from time to time. The Federal government's Committee on Violence, staffed by professionals such as Duncan Campbell (then Director of the Australian Insitute of Criminology) and Kim Dwyer of the SA Health and Welfare Child Protection Agency concluded in a report called Violence: Directions for Australia, "At the present time no direct causal link has been established between television violence and aggressive behaviour."

Tripple-J FM are criticised for airing the song 'Fuck tha Police' by US rap band Niggers with Attitude (NWA), and 1960's rebel-turned-wowser Richard Neville slams The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and Blue Velvet saying, "Who needs it?"

1991: Customs officials raid the homes of a number of horror fans who are alledged to have banned films and publications. It is suspected that Customs were hunting down child and bestiality porn, not horror, but at least two people were prosecuted and fined for owning prohibited horror videos. American Psycho, Final Exit and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (banned twice) cause problems for the censors.

1992: X and R rated movies and programmes are banned from pay-TV by changes to the Broadcasting Services Act, despite an 82% approval result from a government-commissioned public survey. A special senate committee decide to ignore this advice in favour of imposing the additional restrictions. Deregulation of the pay-TV industry in July 1997 may overturn these decisions, or at least loosen them up a fraction. Pasolini's Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom is passed by the Board of Review after 17 years of prohibition. It is still unofficially banned from video release. WA and SA place restrictions on its distribution, and major cinema chains such as Birch Carrol & Coyle in Queensland refuse to show it in any of their multiplexes. The 1981 Chinese gore film Dr. Lamb is released with 11 minutes cut; even it's poster is banned.

1994: A new rating, MA 15+, is introduced largely because of a push by Prime Minister Paul Keating, who was outraged that Crocodile Dundee and Cape Fear received the same classification (M). He also managed to bring the TV rating system in-line with the cinema/video system, imposing a 9:30pm start time for MA rated programmes.

1995: X and R rated computer games are banned from general release under the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act. G, G8+, M, MA are the only legal ratings. X rated games are still easily available.

Spore Whores #1, a horror comic by Steve Carter and Antoinette Rydyr, was seized by Customs and banned by the censors. Femosaur World, nabbed at the same time, was passed. A shipment containing Spore Whores #2 and #3 was recently intercepted by Customs; bans for both issues are expected.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is released on sell-thru video by the CIC Horror House label totally uncut. Initially banned, this film was cut heavily for its original release. The sell-thru print of Friday 13th Part 1 is a cut version, even though it was originally rated R uncut.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification set up a web page to allow free access to classification decisions for the last 12 to 18 months. Previously this information was available in the Telecom Discovery network and before that in the Government Gazette and Cinema Papers.

1996: Martin Bryant massacres 35 tourists at Port Arthur in Tasmania. The media blames the 2000 violent videos found at his residence, a claim that is later withdrawn, albeit with far less sensation. Another little-mentioned fact involved one of the illegal rifles Bryant used: it had been handed to VIC police a year earlier during one of their amnesties, and from there somehow found its way onto the black market. Nevertheless, advisory panels have been proposed by the Liberal Communications Minister Richard Alston that would represent the community's attitudes more accurately than the board members, who are said to have fallen out of touch with current trends. The board would still have final say on decisions, after consulting the panels. The Labour opposition spokesman Nick Bolkus responded to this move by saying, "I don't want John Howard selecting culture cops telling me what to read and watch."

Penalties for downloading and distributing pornography on the Internet are hastily set at $10,000 and $20,000 (unsubstantiated) by Queensland and NSW. Other states have followed suit. Ironically, the Encyclopedia Brittanica contains a recipie for the same pipe-bomb that snuffed two people at the Atlanta Olympic Games. October: in Queensland, a man arrested for obtaining pornographic material through the Internet is aquitted on the grounds that the laws did not apply to that medium.

David Cronenberg's Crash, based on J. G. Ballard's controversial novel, is passed uncut with an R rating. The same movie met with problems in the UK. Music CDs are assigned "18+ restricted" or "unrestricted" labels following a long debate that started with the confiscation of several death metal CDs in 1994.

1997 and beyond: Under the Liberal (ha ha) government, tighter controls are bound to be imposed for the Internet, movies and literature.