Pornography in Australia

[2] In 1983, Labor Attorney General Gareth Evans oversaw video regulation by devising a compulsory classification scheme.

[3] The following year an ordinance was passed that included a new X classification that was to apply to the sale of videos in the Commonwealth Territories.

[3] In 2007, the Northern Territory National Emergency Response, introduced by the Howard government, made the possession of alcohol or material classified as X18+ or RC (the former being the classification given to all legal forms of pornography, while the latter being the classification given to anything banned in Australia) a criminal offence in some remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, including in the Alice Springs town camps.

[9] A 2024 Queensland University of Technology study found that the majority of young people aged 15–20 years old had been exposed to pornography, intentionally or accidentally.

This includes any pornography depicting violent BDSM, incest, paedophilia, zoophilia, certain extreme fetishes (such as golden showers) and/or indicators of youth (such as wearing a school uniform).

However, all of these other than paedophilic and zoophilic pornography are widely available on pornographic websites, which are accessed by millions of Australians.

In December 2008, a man from Sydney was convicted of possessing child pornography after it was found that he had sexually explicit images of Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpson, three fictional characters from the American animated sitcom The Simpsons who are minors, on his computer.