More porn being rated as objectionable by censor

File photo / Bay of Plenty Times

More sexual material involving children and young people has been classified as objectionable because police have increased reporting it, MPs were told today.

New Chief Censor Andrew Jack and his deputy Nic McCully appeared before Parliament's government administration committee.

Mr Jack, who has only been in the job a week, said in the past year the Office of Film and Literature Classification had evaluated 2800 different items. It had banned 431 as objectionable, 600 were rated R16 and 783 as R18.

National MP Nikki Kaye was concerned there had been a 41 per cent increase of material rated objectionable on the previous year and of that increase 71 per cent were examples that exploited children or young people for sexual purposes.

Mr Jack said that since 2005 maximum penalties for having such material had increased significantly and when the censor classified material as objectionable police did not have to prove that aspect in court.

Ms McCully said the same year procedures were changed police could report cases directly to the censor.

"Police have been responsible for the majority of that increase. They now can submit directly to us without having to go through any procedures."

She said most of the material rated objectionable appeared to be from the internet.

"The majority are image files, sometimes moving image files, short downloaded movies."

- NZPA