News | Sunday, 10 January 2010

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Censorship – Labour wants abolition by May

Labour can be expected to move its own private members’ bill on the abolition of film and theatre censorship by May 2010, according to Labour MP Owen Bonnici.
Writing in MaltaToday (page 20) Bonnici reacts to a report carried in this newspaper last week on Opposition leader Joseph Muscat’s lack of support to push Bonnici’s draft bill to abrogate the censorship regime.
“It would be easy for me to step up in Parliament... and present a draft bill on the abrogation of censorship,” Bonnici writes, adding however that it would be “shot down by the government majority at the first opportunity.”
Bonnici claims the Opposition’s ‘go slow’ on censorship is because it has “patiently waited for the right moment to arrive so that the House of Representatives will be unanimous on this issue.”
The MP says that unless the government presents a bill “leading to the abolition of artistic censorship in a reasonable time” by the end of May, Labour will take “all remedies we deem fit, including the presentation of private members’ bills.”
Bonnici’s bill proposes the abrogation of any censorship powers enjoyed by the Film Classification Board, and instead empower it to simply classify films and theatre productions, but not order the cutting out of any scenes or lines.

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