Parliament House has ordered the last minute cancellation of a movie trailer screening, claiming a satirical cartoon by the creators of the hugely popular Please Explain series might offend people.
One Nation had hired the Parliament House theatre to screen the trailer of A Super Progressive Movie, which it helped fund, with party leader Pauline Hanson claiming people had flown in from around Australia to attend Tuesday’s event.
However at the last minute, Parliament House cancelled the event – despite it having been booked almost six weeks earlier on October 16.
A spokesperson for the Department of Parliamentary Services told SkyNews.com.au that the event had been cancelled in accordance with the Parliament House events policy.
“These considerations include the requirement … of not being likely to cause offence to any part of the Australian community,” the spokesperson said.
Senator Hanson said she suspected the decision to wait until the day of the screening to cancel the event was intentional.
“I strongly suspect they left it until the last minute to maximise our inconvenience,” Senator Hanson said.
The decision to cancel the screening was viewed as “deliciously ironic” by the creators of the film which mocks cancel culture and progressive causes.
Stepmates Studios founders Mark Nicholson and Sebastian Peart described the film as their attempt at “a good old fashioned p**s-take”.
The film follows four progressives living in the insulated “Naarm Bubble” (Melbourne) who are thrust out of their fantasy world and into an Australia where Pauline Hanson is Prime Minister.
“It’s a hero’s journey, where these crazy lefties must venture into the real world to reclaim their ideology’s most powerful weapon: the Victimhood,” creator/director Sebastian Peart explained.
“We wanted to take characters that are utterly ridiculous and put them through a serious philosophical and ideological arc. It’s silly, but it has something to say. We’re really proud of it.”
Senator Hanson said the cancellation of ‘A Super Progressive Movie’ showed the “super-progressive Parliament House … doesn’t understand one of the most basic principles of democracy”.
“Our movie may very well offend some people. Offending people is an inevitable consequence of free speech, a fundamental principle of Australian democracy. No-one has a right to be unoffended, contrary to what the ‘super progressive left’ believes,” she said.
“Parliament is supposed to be the seat of Australian democracy and a forum for frank and fearless speech and debates of national importance.
“It doesn’t exist to protect people from being offended. It’s an insult to Australians to even suggest they need to be protected from a movie trailer.
The One Nation Senator said not only had Parliament House failed to stop the event going ahead at an alternative venue – but the move would only result in more people seeing it.
“This sort of censorship, based on the fear of the free speech principles Parliament House obviously doesn’t understand, only promotes the material being censored,” she said.
“Luckily, Parliament House is powerless to stop us from screening the trailer elsewhere and we’ve secured an alternative venue. We won’t allow Parliament’s fear of free speech to prevent us from exercising it.”
