The SPCS are mortally offended at the fact that the Film and Literature Board of Review decided to uphold the Office of Film and Literature Classification’s decision to pass Philip Nitschke’s Peaceful Pill Handbook with an R18 rating.

In a sickening display of media opportunism, SPCS made the following media release on its website:

In the light of the release of new coroners’ figures on suicide rates, the Society is slamming a unanimous decision by the 8-member Film and Literature Board of Review to support the public availability of a sick book that provides step-by-step methods of how to commit suicide and assist others to do so. The book - The Peaceful Pill Handbook - now classified R18 by the Board, is authored by an elderly Australian zealot, obsessed with seeking notoriety for himself - via his his culture of death propaganda message and his exploitation of weak and vulnerable people who he convinces to fly to Mexico to obtain an illegal suicide drug he promotes in his book and at his fee-paying seminars.     

Exploiting the personal tragedies of hundreds of New Zealand families, they used a Dominion-Post article that compared suicide and road accident levels, and noted:

“More people [in New Zealand] took their own lives than died in road crashes in the past year, new coroners’ figures show. In the year to the end of June, 511 suicides were reported to coroners - 1.4 self-inflicted deaths a day…. Chief coroner Judge Neil MacLean said … Raw data about suicides was ‘rather shocking’… [As a comparison] There were 422 road deaths last year.” (See link to full report below).

The Society wants New Zealanders to know the names of the Board members who, by their decision, have released a publication into circulation that advocates for and promotes suicide. The members involved in the decision were: Claudia Elliott (President), Dr Jo Baddeley (Deputy President), Judy Callingham, Judith Fyfe, Dr Ian Lambie, Mark Andersen, Andrea Haines, and Ani Waaka (All were recommended for appointment by the Labour-led government Minister of Internal Affairs). The Board upheld the R18 classification issued earlier by the Chief Censor’s Office.

Excuse me, that’s not what the OFLC found at all. How exactly can a booklet that has been edited specifically to excise material that might have been used to assist and abet suicide through detailed instructions do so? As for claims that it is “propaganda” on behalf of voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide, of course it is. However,  Nitschke has the right to engage in free speech on behalf of his specific philosophies related to those bioethical issues within a pluralistic, democratic society whose Bill of Rights upholds the right to free speech as one of its most central tenets. 

Moreover, media effects scholarship is sceptical about any claims that a particular media product can lead to any alleged antisocial or “immoral” or self-destructive behaviour. Except in Christian Right fantasy land, life’s not quite that simple.

Or is the SPCS now calling for religious and politically ordained censorship to suppress viewpoints on its pet issues that it doesn’t agree with? What a sinister development, if that is the case.

Recommended:

Office of Film and Literature Classification/Film and Literature Review Board decision:

http://www.censorship.govt.nz/news-archive-current-peacefulpill-new-revised-edition.html
Not Recommended:

Society for Promotion of Community Standards: http://www.spcs.org.nz

Tiny dying Christian Right pro-censorship pressure group

Source Reference:

Lane Nichols: “Suicide toll surpasses road deaths” 25.10.08: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4738796a20475.html