Remove the word Pornography from Australian Customs Incoming Passenger Card

The Australian Sex Party is demanding the new question that has appeared on Incoming Passenger Cards at the Customs point of entry into Australia be removed. The new question asks if they are carrying any ‘pornography’.

Sex Party President, Fiona Patten, said that this development now gave Government officials an unfettered right to examine someone’s laptop or mobile phone as they re-entered the country. A senior Customs official, Richard Janeczko, has been quoted as saying that materials “stored on electronic media devices such as laptops, thumb drives and iPhones” are on their target list.

“If you and your partner have filmed or photographed yourselves making love in an exotic destination or even taking a bath, you will have to answer ‘Yes’ to the question or you will be breaking the law”, she said. Travellers must now also declare perfectly legal materials such as Category 1 and 2 Restricted magazines, X18+ films and quite probably a large section of R18+ films which have explicit sex in them. Ms Patten said the change marked the beginning of a new era of official investigation into people’s private lives – being investigated or searched on the basis that you might have legal material in your possession.

She said that by answering YES to the new Question One on the declarations, people would then be asked whether they are declaring a weapon, illicit drugs or pornography. When they answered ‘pornography’ their materials would then be examined by one and possibly a number of Customs Officers. If people were at all embarrassed by the question, often surrounded by family and friends, they could be taken into a private room and even have their person searched.
“Is it fair that Customs officers rummage through someone’s luggage and pull out a legal men’s magazine or a lesbian journal in front of their children or their mother-in-law”, she said?

Customs’ official reasoning behind the changes states that ‘No consultation was undertaken under section 17 of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003 before this instrument was made as it is of a minor or machinery nature and does not substantially alter existing arrangements.’

“The term ‘pornography’ is not referred to at all in the federal Classification Act which Customs rely on to classify their material .