A brief update on the R18+ classification rating debate

posted by David Doe, 13 Apr 2010
While it is difficult to pin down the various Attorneys-General on their actual and substantive views on the matter, there have been several breakthroughs.

Firstly, and it's important to note that this was flagged as a potential issue way back in February, it would appear that the overwhelming number of responses to the Discussion Paper have effectively ensured that we will not get any firm response at the next SCAG meeting to be held on May 7th. It has been indicated that there are simply too many responses to collate in the timeframe they have been given, and this has received soft confirmation from two Attorneys-General offices that their understanding of this meeting was that it would contain information on progress and not the completed report in its entirety.

Secondly, it's hard to gauge what's actually going to be discussed at any SCAG meeting in any event, as a spokesperson for the SCAG stated that the "meeting agenda is confidential" in order to allow the Attorneys the ability to have "open and frank discussion with each other". And aside from being in Melbourne, the location of the meeting is also not disclosed for reasons of confidentiality. Try not to let your irony-detector break when considering that it describes a meeting between censorship ministers.

So where does this leave us in regards to the R18+ rating? In limbo. We're probably going to have to wait until the following SCAG meeting to be held in July to get a clear confirmation on this. Nailing politicians down on any policy point, especially so close to a federal election, is tricky at best, but we will continue to try and do so, and we want to encourage everyone else to try as well.

So... get active. Email your local and federal members. Forward their replies to us and we'll put their answer into a 'yes', 'no', 'lazy' or 'coward' category for everyone to see at a glance who supports it, who doesn't support it, who copies and pastes form-responses, and who deliberately evades the question. And if you're really energetic, get in touch with their opponent, or all of the candidates in your electorate and send us their responses too.

As for the future of Gamers4Croydon... Stay tuned. =)