Public to decide on R18+ rating

PALGN News | After Ministers fail to agree.

As we reported earlier in the week, the Attorney General's meeting over whether Australia should have an R18+ rating for games was held earlier today. And the result? A stalemate. The issue will now go to a public consultation.

The exact details of the consultation are currently unknown, but it is expected that the results will be ready to present at the next meeting. According to reports, Victorian Deputy Premier and Attorney-General Rob Hulls pushed in favour of an R18+ rating but was predictably greeted with significant opposition from South Australia's Attorney-General, Michael Atkinson, who continued to push his argument that he was protecting children from "harmful material". However, it is known that for the rating to be passed, there has to be agreement from all the states.

Ron Curry, CEO of the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia (IEAA), was pleased with the result of the meeting. "Our belief is that good legislation comes from a reflection of community sentiment, so the process that the attorney-general is outlining gives us the opportunity to move this into the public forum for discussion," he said. "We understand that there is a robust legislative process that things must go through, so we have to work through that whole process."

When we find out exactly how the public will be consulted, PALGN will be sure to let you know if you can contribute in any way.

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77 Comments

lennex15

3 years ago

Is anyone really surprised that the panel experts are really misinformed and ignorant when it comes to gaming classification I mean we didn't have an aboriginal health crisis until 6 months -12months ago. Iraq was supposed to have WMD's, global warming didn't exist 12 months ago, petrol is in never ending supply and would never reach 1.70 a litre, government can control inflation, housing and rental prices.
Seriously this just ticks the next box of misinformed, mis-representative, spin doctoring lines of bulsh*t that we're constantly fed and swallow from all governments.
As a side note anyone watching The Hollowmen on abc http://www.abc.net.au/tv/hollowmen/#/home watched it last night good to see Rob Sitch and Santo Cilauro doing what they do best.

El Taco

3 years ago

The guy that did that was a forum member from Australian Gamer (props to him for wearing a Fallout shirt) Joaby, who was requested by Matt (co founder of Australian Gamer) who only told him to come on the day.

The only reason he said "yeah" as the old guy was talking aboutg Fallout 3, as the people in the TV studio didn't let him say anything else, or anything that seemed "smartass".

Shorty

3 years ago

As I pointed out in the article thread, none of the panel members had any connection to the games industry whatsoever, so there was no one on the panel that would have been willing to come to the aid of the gamers and be able to correct any myths or misconceptions that the other members of the panel would bring up.

Furthermore, I would argue that the actual question part of the question probably framed the discussion in the wrong way, as the real problem isn't so much that the government actively censors what adults can and can't see (the mere existence of the OFLC proves that they do, and arguing that the OFLC be replaced by something else would be pretty much impossible right now) but that the ratings for games are unequal and need to be brought up to parity with movies by adding an R18+ rating for games. By not explicitly framing the argument around the ratings system, it made it too easy for other, less relevent topics like "avatar ****", snuff and gambling to dominate the discussion. A more thorough discussion could have also gone into the inconsistency in the OFLC's recent decisions and whether their practices can be improved and protected from undue political interference, but that would have taken the whole show.

And it's pretty clear that the few minutes that were allocated to this topic have pissed off people enough already.