A bit of decorum, please.
Prime Minister John Howard wants Australia’s television networks to clean up their acts, bemoaning the ”marked deterioration in good manners”.
”I think there are certain vulgar expressions that have no place on television and if there’s not some self-discipline exercised in that, I think standards will continue to deteriorate,” Howard told reporters on Tuesday.
Howard was speaking in support of a senior judge who used a speech to the Sydney legal fraternity on Monday night to lament the prevalence of boorish behaviour and the lack of ordinary manners in Australian society where, he said, the words ”please”, ”thank you” and ”sorry” are all but extinct.
New South Wales state Chief Justice Jim Spigelman blamed the deterioration on a wide range of factors, including reality TV, which has been an ongoing concern for Howard’s centre-right coalition.
Howard’s communications minister in June last year ordered the country’s television standards watchdog to look at Network Ten’s fly-on-the wall series Big Brother to see if it breached a voluntary code of conduct that covers what networks can and can’t air after complaints about scenes of full-frontal nudity.
The network responded with an apology for any offence caused.
Opposition Labour Party Leader Kim Beazley agreed Australians should respect each other but should also rejoice in being a laid-back society.
”I think we need to enjoy the fact that we live in a terrific community. We’re a good, laid back, tolerant community,” Beazley said. — Sapa-AP