CANBERRA, Australia—Members of Australia's Parliament are now considering a prohibition on pornography depicting strangulation and choking. Tanya Plibersek, a Labor MP and the social services minister for the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, announced the government's intent over the weekend, with other leaders confirming the move.
"There is something wrong with a situation where 60 percent of young people say they've experienced strangulation," Plibersek explained on the Insiders program, a popular political and current events television show aired by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The MP said that the government is considering this proposal "very seriously."
"This is not sex education. It's not real life," Plibersek said. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Albanese's office told News.com.au, “The Albanese Government is deeply concerned about young people being exposed to sexual strangulation and other harmful behaviours through online content such as pornography.
“That’s why our world-leading online safety laws include strong protections to prevent children from being exposed to age-inappropriate content," the spokesperson added, alluding to the eSafety Commissioner's industry codes regulating adult entertainment industry websites operating within the Australian digital space.
Other reports indicate that Australian Attorney-General Michelle Rowland is working with Plibersek and other senior Labor and Liberal MPs to outlaw the practice and criminalize it.
Calls for the prohibition of choking depictions in pornography intensified following the recent death of a teenage girl from Sydney. The New South Wales Police believe the cause of death was a "suspected sexual choking act." The girl was found unresponsive when medical first responders arrived on the scene. She died at a hospital in a Sydney suburb days later.
Inspiration for the ban has been drawn from the United Kingdom. Parliament in the U.K. adopted amendments to a sweeping Crime and Policing Bill that outlawed depictions of strangulation in online pornographic content, even if the content is produced consensually between parties.