"(2) The registration provisions are a rather complex way of achieving their object, which is to enable the Court to put a seller out of business if he is convicted of an offence against the Act and if the Court believes his conduct is such as to warrant this penalty. We think that this object could be achieved by giving the Court this power directly. It could be provided that on convicting any one under the Act the Court may make an order prohibiting him for a certain period from carrying on the business of selling books or periodicals. The provisions as to registration could then be repealed."
Some members of the present Committee felt that this power should be exercised only in the case of a second or subsequent conviction.
"(3) The marking requirements of the Act are not well adapted to their object, and, as we have mentioned, it has proved necessary to a large extent to dispense with compliance with them. We think it is anomalous that the law should continue to require marking while almost every publication is exempted.
"In place of the present marking provisions we suggest that every New Zealand publisher should continue to be required to print his name and address on what he publishes, that the importer of overseas periodicals for sale or distribution be required to supply to the Department of Justice a list of the titles imported by him, and that every one other than a retail bookseller who carries on the business of importing books be required to supply to that Department a list of the publishers whose books he imports.
"(4) There is one anomaly in section 5 (1) (_d_) of the principal Act as set out in the 1954 Act. This is the provision which requires the Magistrate to take account of the persons, classes, or age groups to whom a document is sold or is intended or likely to be sold _and the tendency of the document to deprave or corrupt such persons_. The words in italics are appropriate in the Victorian statute from which they were copied because the common-law test of depraving or corrupting applies in Victoria, but they are at best unnecessary in New Zealand where the Act lays down its own test--namely, that the act of the defendant must be of an 'immoral or mischievous tendency'.