Campbelltown Council says monitoring the reading of children is the responsibility of their parents or guardians.
This is part of its response to a petition calling for an investigation into the “sexually explicit books that are being made available to children in the libraries of Campbelltown. The government should not be supplying children with books of this nature as it goes against everything that is moral.”
The online petition contained 160 signatures, six of which identified as being from the Campbelltown local government area.
The petition was referred to council’s director of city lifestyles for investigation.
The business paper for next week’s council meeting, on Tuesday, May 9, includes the report prepared following the completion of the investigation of the concerns expressed in the petition.
A number of titles were specified in the petition as being of concern, but the council report, with the exception of one, does not identify them.
It does say that the items listed in the petition are “unclassified” according to the Classification Board.
“This means that they can be placed on open shelves without restrictions.’’
The report said the exception was one title, “Gender Queer” which was classified on April 3 this year by the Classification Board as Unrestricted, along with consumer advice of M – not recommended for readers under 15 years of age.
“As this sits on council’s electronic Comics Platform, our supplier will follow this advice,’’ the report said.
Other than that, the library’s collection is currently compliant with all relevant federal and state legislation, regulations and guidelines as well of the adopted policy of the council.
The report also points out that Section 22 of the Local Government Act 1993 confers to councils the function to provide library services to the community in accordance with the provisions of the NSW Library Act 1939 which states that public libraries must cater to a wide audience, regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or genetic information.
“As the Federal and State Governments are responsible for the classification and censorship of the library materials and collections, the head petitioner may consider referring their concerns to the relevant State and/or Federal Member of Parliament,’’ says the report to council.
Echoes of America. I hope it doesn’t go the way it is there, with an ever growing list of banned books.
Agreed!
Would love to know how many petition signers, even the organiser have even opened these books. Guarantee it’s a list of books circulated by an American religious movement. Leave our range of books alone !
A bit of a cop out by Council, if the local community has concerns about their libraries then it’s Council’s responsibility to fix it regardless of classification decisions by State or Federal governments. Local community concerns should be addressed by Local Government.
Until Council is able to monitor the ages of the readers looking at sexually explicit books they should not be in the Childrens section and no it is not just the parents responsibility to see what children read in the library it is just a pathetic response that put that one back at parents.