"**** me, a senate inquiry, where's your bollocks!?"
Ramsay's not going to f-f-fade away - National - theage.com.au
POTTY-MOUTHED chef Gordon Ramsay can continue to swear with impunity, with a Senate inquiry expected to reject calls for some obscenities to be banned from television.
The Age believes the Senate report, to be released today, rejects the notion that some profanities should be decreed unacceptable. It is expected to point out that community standards evolve, and to codify them would be exceptionally difficult.
Liberal senator Cory Bernardi instigated the inquiry into swearing on the box after the crass cook described his sous-chef as "this little c---" and dropped the f-word 80 times on a recent episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.
Some witnesses and submissions to the inquiry called for the c-word to be banned from TV, arguing that those repeatedly exposed to bad language would blaspheme more often.
The Australian Family Association said offensive language was "increasingly incompatible with respect for women and girls and incompatible with healthy psychosexual development in children or young teenagers".
Channel Nine told the inquiry it had now banned the c-word from all programs.
The Senate committee could recommend that classification codes be clarified, to enable viewers to more accurately assess the content of programs.
For example, under guidelines set out by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the MA (mature audience) classification states: "The use of coarse language must be appropriate to the story line or program context, infrequent and must not be very aggressive … It may be used more than infrequently only in certain justifiable circumstances."
Senator Bernardi told a hearing last month that there was "a fair bit of wiggle room" in some of the classifications. The report could call for greater definition of terms such as "appropriate context".
And it is expected to call for a more robust complaints procedure. The commercial networks insist on written complaints and will not investigate email or phone gripes.
The report is likely to recommend that stations show the classification logo next to the watermark during programs, instead of for a brief period after an ad break.
On initiating the inquiry in March, Senator Bernardi said the "c-bomb" was grossly offensive to mainstream Australia. "If I stood up in Parliament and used the type of language that is now being broadcast over our television screens, there would be public outrage."
But the inquiry heard that, according to an ACMA survey, only 3% of parents stopped children from watching programs because of bad language last year, compared with 34% in 1995.
Ramsay's potty-mouth prompts changes | Herald Sun
