Other agencies' roles
- The Classification Office
- The Film and Video Labelling Body
- New Zealand Police
- New Zealand Customs Service
- Film and Literature Board of Review
The Classification Office
The Classification Office classifies films, videos, and publications. This may include cutting films and videos.
The Classification Office approve Commercial Video On-Demand Providers (CVoD) self-rating systems for classifying content. They also provide a self-rating system which CVoD Providers can use.
If you are concerned that something you have seen should be classified, then you should contact the Classification Office.
The Classification Office provides online information for people who do not speak English as their first language. Information in 20 languages and scripts is now available.
The Film and Video Labelling Body
Unlabelled films and videos first pass though the hands of the Film and Video Labelling Body.
The group is made up of industry and community representatives, and the Labelling Body is guided by the classifications given elsewhere in the world.
Under the regulations, Australian classifications are used as a guide, with some lesser use made of British classifications. Those films and videos which the Labelling Body believes warrant a restricted classification (the most common restrictions are R16 and R18) are passed on to the Classification Office.
New Zealand Police
The New Zealand Police may be called on to enforce the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act. Under the FVPC Act all Constables are Inspectors of Publications.
Online Child Exploitation Across New Zealand (OCEANZ) is a specialist team within the Police proactively working to save children in New Zealand as part of a Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT) focused on child exploitation.
This team:
- coordinates international operations into online paedophile networks;
- identifies child sexual offenders by electronically patrolling social network websites; and
- targets New Zealand child exploitation sites, including those producing images and abuse for financial gain, in an effort to identify and rescue victims, as well as recovering proceeds of crime gathers intelligence for sharing with District-based child exploitation squads, the Department of Internal Affairs, Customs, and international partners.
New Zealand Customs Service
The New Zealand Customs Service is the first line of defence against objectionable publications entering New Zealand at the border.
Any material or publication which might be considered objectionable must be declared on arrival in New Zealand.
The definition of publication includes – but is not limited to – films, videos, computer games, DVDs, CD-ROMs, books, posters, music recordings, magazines, photographs, paintings, t-shirts and computer files.
A publication is objectionable if it describes, depicts, expresses or otherwise deals with matters such as sex, horror, crime, cruelty or violence in such a manner that the availability of the publication is likely to be injurious to the public good.
Objectionable publications are prohibited imports and will be seized.
The NZCS also operates a specialist team to counter offences against children, the Child Exploitation Operations Team (CEOT).
Film and Literature Board of Review
If the person who originally submitted the film, video or publication for classification disagrees with the classification, then he or she can appeal to the Film and Literature Board of Review.
Similarly, any member of the public who disagrees with a classification can ask the Secretary for Internal Affairs for leave to submit the publication to the Film and Literature Board of Review for re-examination.
