According to a report in The Australian, the Federal Government has received over 55,000 submissions on whether an R18+ rating should be introduced for video games. The government will now prepare a report for the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General based on these submissions, with the next SCAG meeting to be held sometime in April.

An introduction to an R18+ rating still requires the unanimous support between the Commonwealth, states, and territories, and the high number of submissions might or might not convince those that are against the rating to change their stance. So we can only sit back and hope that come April an R18+ rating for games will be added so that children are better protected from inappropriate material and that the Classification Board can rate games on a consistent basis.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 8:23 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Comments on 55,000+ responses to Discussion Paper

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   lewesb says:

   55,000! :O

   *shakes hips” “woop-woop!”

   Such great news, well done to all who submitted

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   TJDW says:

   Good to hear, but I will lay money on it not achieving anything. Nothing we can say, nothing we can do will ever convince Atkinson to change his mind. The guy put $20,000 into a BS report stating that Video Games are more harmful than cigarettes for god’s sake (and also that Bananas in Pajamas causes violence in young children). All this will do is leave us right back where we started from. No R18+, no options other than protest and ultimately NO SAY. Everything in this country is run by conservatives who fear and oppose any sort of meaningful change, particularly the ones they don’t understand/care about. The government is conservative (and I’m talking BOTH parties here), the media is conservative (except maybe the ABC) and the average voting Australian is conservative. I mean who do we honestly have on our side that can actually make a difference?

   Believe me I sincerely hope I’m wrong, but all evidence up to this point has shown otherwise.

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   David Doe says:

   Gamers4Croydon is on your side.

   Contact your federal MP and Senators using our contact widget on our website. We have a pre-written letter you can send them, calling for them to introduce an amendment to remove the unanimity requirement of the Classification Act of 1995.

   We’ve got 12 days to go before the South Australian election, so help get the word out to everyone you know.

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   Dan says:

   @ David Doe

   Hey David wishing you all the best with the election, really hope Michael Atkinson doesn’t get back in.

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   SHaunoez says:

   most annoying thing here is
   like all previous polls and public questionnaires/polls
   cause almost every year they do it, and ask the public what they want, and the public always votes in a landslide for r18+ games, however then the government mysteriously loses the report, and just claims no one wanted r18+ games.

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   MEM says:

   then its up to the general public to remove the corruption from the government, by means of processes that have been set in place for such an occasion, if need be I will be there to do so, the last thing you would want to do is annoy a country worth of people that could easily cover the ACT