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Anti-Gamer South Australian Attorney General Quits
dogbolter writes "South Australian Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, infamous for the banning of R18+ rated games and the censoring of political comment in Australia, has quit. The recent South Australian election provided a massive swing against Atkinson's governing labor party. As a direct result of the South Australian election result, he is standing down. Hopefully someone with half a clue will assume the vacant post and overturn the decision to ban adult oriented computer games."
A lot of game shops have petitions to sign - Aussies, if you are dropping by one to pick up the latest austrlian-modified (aka heavily-censored) version of whatever, ask to sign the petition. (I found one to sign, right at the front of the store "GAME", in the Brisbane CBD). More info about the craziness of no R18+ games for Australia is Here
how is the SA AG's view on computer games flawed? It should be obvious to anyone that he believes that the views of his constituency...are not supportive of a "wider range" of content in video games.
First of all, he doesn't believe that. In a recent letter he wrote about this, he stated "this issue has little traction with my constituents who are more concerned with real-life issues than home entertainment in imaginary worlds". So it seems that he is not representing the will of his constituents, but he thinks that they don't care about it.
As to why it is flawed, that is because it is so out of step with the rest of the country. Adding an R rating for video games requires the agreement of all Attorneys General of all the states. Michael Atkinson is the only one who will not agree to it, despite the evidence suggesting that the majority of Australians support the introduction.
The main problem is that it doesn't stop kids from seeing adult games. In fact, because there is no R rating, games that would have received that tend to get MA15+ ratings. Those that aren't banned, that is.
Every independent survey run found wide support for an R rating for games amoung the Australian community: Link (reference in there to a survey finding 88% support). Atkinson is considerably more conservative than his base on the issue - this is (or was) a politician's individual crusade, not him representing his electorate.
I don't think this is quite the scalp everyone is looking for..
It is good enough. He was the one person in Australia who was preventing the R18+ rating from being introduced. He wasn't just one politician who was against it, he was someone who had veto power over the entire thing. Now that he is out of that key role, the way is clear for all Attorneys General to allow the change to go through.
It's mostly because what he's trying to do and what's actually doing are two very different things.
Here in Australia, anything which is Refused Classification(RC) is, in effect, banned. If/When the new internet filter gets put in then apparently even websites talking about RC games or other material will be blocked in part or whole. Since there is no R rating, anything which would receive one is instead RC.
This has a number of negative effects of course. For the purposes of this guy one of the most important is that the ratings board which is of course "at arms length from the political process" which is supposed to mean unaffected by politics, but really means unaccountable to voters, despite their generally rather stodgy views do not particularly like banning things. They perhaps feel that banning things is a really rather serious action to take.
This means that a lot of material which should probably be in the lower end of the R rating band gets pushed down into the MA15+ band, because while it's not exactly appropriate it's not exactly ban worthy either. This means that the upper end of MA15+ is full of a lot of stuff which really isn't necessarily appropriate for someone who is 15 years old to be able to buy on their own without mum and dad being vaguely aware that it's being bought.
Personally I dislike games like manhunt and the other over the top gore games and wouldn't be at all sad if they had never been made at all, but I also feel that Fallout 3, while I personally loved it, is probably a bit borderline for some younger players. Under the current law games like that get pushed into the MA15+ rating zone when they would probably be more comfortable in the R region(and of course the drug animations could have remained in all copies of the game rather than being cut because of this very reason).
Atkinson's position is counterproductive to what he actually wants to accomplish.
Atkinson's censorship of games is a part of a pattern of behaviour. This is the man who also passed a law making anonymous speech illegal specifically for this election campaign.
He then had the cheek, after intense criticism, to say if he was re-elected he'd remove it after the election. It's likely that this was more damaging to the Labor party in this election than the R18 issue.
I am very happy to hear he no longer holds office, as I detest the man and what he stands for. Australia is now a slightly better place. Next up, hopefully, Conroy and the internet filter.