Australian R18+ Rating For Games? Not Yet; NSW Refuses To Vote

UgLyPuNk writes "Just a few hours after the Australian gaming public was confused by the stance taken by the South Australian Attorney-General, they're now getting angry over his New South Wales counterpart's decision. While the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General had planned on making a decision regarding the introduction of an R18+ rating for video games on Friday at a meeting in Adelaide, the NSW Attorney-General has announced he will not vote on the topic at this time."

Comments

What's that supposed to mean?

[Opportunist]

Some AG in a territory can block a nationwide law if he doesn't want it? That's actually possible in Australia?

Are you serious? If the whole country wants to enact a law but somewhere sits an AG with a diverging opinion, he can simply block it by not voting on it? That's quite a bit of power in the hands of a single person.

Re:What's that supposed to mean?

[bug1]

Its not the federal government job to impose laws governing "state issues", and for whatever (stupid) reason, the issue of R18+ is considered an issue for the states.

IFF all the states can agree then its easy for the federal government to make a federal law, they cant be accused of taking power away from the states.

If the federal government try and do it without the states it could be challenged on constitutional grounds.

What i dont understand is why the states dont implement these laws in their own state, without a national agreement.

Re:What's that supposed to mean?

[TBBle]

Because they have agreed not to, in order to keep things relatively in-sync. The individual implementations do vary state-by-state. For example, you can't sell or demonstrate RC video games in the ACT, but you can certainly own and play them. In WA (I understand) it's illegal to even own RC material.

It's a state issue because everything is a state or territory issue except that limited set of things listed in the constitution. (One of these limited things is what makes "customs" a federal issue, which is why the customs rules are tighter than any state or territory's on RC material, but once it's past customs, those rules are irrelevant) So the federal government cannot make a law about classification, the best they can do is create and issue codes and guidelines. Which they do. It's a very similar thing in traffic law. We now have a national traffic law code, but each state must codify (and amend as they see fit) that code into their own law.

Re:What's that supposed to mean?

[TBBle]

This only applies to certain laws, where pre-existing agreements... exist *cough* to keep the relevant laws in sync between states and territories. It just happens that the classification system is one of them.

http://www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/agd.nsf/Page/Committeesandcouncils_Ministerialcouncils_StandingCommitteeofAttorneysGeneral

Re:What's that supposed to mean?

[dakameleon]

+1 Informative

It bugs me though that if the OFLC is at the Federal level, and this should be harmonised across all states, why is the legislative power not also at the federal level? arrgh!

Re:What's that supposed to mean?

[Eskarel]

Because like most countries, our Consitution was written in a different age. One where states were relatively autonomous economically and so wanted to remain relatively autonomous politically. It's a different world now and to a large extent federation doesn't work all that much better for us than it does for the US in most things, it's not really all that likely to change any time soon though, and working out where the new line should be drawn is going to take some time. Some things are still state matters, but at the same time states cannot survive separately anymore the way they could a hundred years ago and so a number of state powers are irrational.

Re:What's that supposed to mean?

[Wolfling1]

Because historically, the only state that has ever had the balls to diverge from the others has been South Australia, and they're currently the nannies that blocked this thing in the first place.

Having been the person to start the ball rolling with petitions to state governments (which flowed on to a great national petition sponsored largely by EB Games), I can summarise the response from the Qld State Parliament: "We'll watch what happens nationally and then consider it."

You can look up my ePetition (1346-09) if you'd like a citation.

This is a particularly useless response given that the State Legislation in Qld already grants it the right to ignore the national classification scheme and apply its own classification to any media refused classification nationally.

The State Government is simply choosing not to act on the wishes of the public because it can choose to do so without consequence.

Don't feel bad, Australia

[elrous0]

In the U.S. we have a similar industry-enforced classification called AO (Adults Only). But it's completely worthless, as no store will carry any AO games. So even if you got the classification, it wouldn't necessarily make it any easier to actually produce an adult game.

Re:Don't feel bad, Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, the situation in Australia is totally different from what's currently in the US and most other countries -- their highest rating is 15+, which is like T for Teen in the US. They don't have anything higher than that, which means they often get severely gimped versions of games, or worse, certain games don't get released there at all. The 18+ rating would actually be like the US's R rating, which Australia desperately needs.

Re:Don't feel bad, Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no. Please become more informed. As other commenters have pointed out, unrated games CANNOT be sold legally in Australia, not even online. It is a big deal to get a R18+ rating even if brick-and-mortar won't sell it, because it means the end of government-mandated censorship of games.

Re:Don't feel bad, Australia

[elrous0]

Who enforces it is really meaningless in any practical sense. No one can afford to produce an AO game because the only way to sell it would be directly on your own website. You also couldn't port it to anything but Android phones--no consoles, no iPhones, etc. Basically if you want to produce an AO game that costs any real money to make, you're SOL. No one will sell it, no one will let it on their closed devices/consoles, no one will even run ads for it.

Is that really any better than the Australian system? Well, sure, *technically*. But *practically* it really means fuck all.

Re:Don't feel bad, Australia

[Spigot the Bear]

In the U.S. we have a similar industry-enforced classification called AO (Adults Only). But it's completely worthless, as no store will carry any AO games. So even if you got the classification, it wouldn't necessarily make it any easier to actually produce an adult game.

I'm not quite sure you understand what's going on here. The highest game rating in Australia is 15, which is analogous to the highest movie rating in the US being PG-13. Anything unsuitable for a 15 year old simply cannot be sold there. The rating they're trying to introduce in Australia is similar to our M rating for games (i.e. R rated movies). With this rating, games containing violence/language/sex suitable for an adult, but not a 15 year old, can be sold on the market. X-rated games are a whole other issue.

Re:Don't feel bad, Australia

[abhi_beckert]

There are several very popular games that are not on sale in australia, and it's possibly illegal to import them.

Re:Don't feel bad, Australia

[TBBle]

it means the end of government-mandated censorship of games.

No. We are talking about a _change_ in the government-mandated censorship of games to match that applied to the film industry.

Re:Don't feel bad, Australia

[dakameleon]

Did people forget about the PC all of a sudden?

That aside, the issue here in Australia is that games are judged to a different scale to movies, due to their interactive nature apparently, as well as the unsaid "child-focused" nature of gaming (I kid you not). Games which fail to meet the Office of Film & Literature Classification board's standards for the "Mature Adults Only (15+)" band - are therefore refused classification (RC), and refused classification means it won't be allowed to be imported into the country, let alone sold. Any explicit sexual content and extreme violence seems to get you over the line here. A rating certificate can also be revoked if later updates provide material which violates standards.

This has resulted in certain games, like the latest Mortal Kombat, or the initial version of GTA 3 (iirc... some big game in any case), being RC'd. I think GTA was revised at the last minute for the Australian version, allowing sale, but Mortal Kombat's producers refused to change and the game wasn't allowed for sale. No huge loss, some might say, but the adults of Australia are asking for the discretion to judge it for themselves. There's also a somebody-think-of-the-children argument in that some games with significant violence are shoe-horned into the MA15+ category when they more properly belong in an R18+ category.

Re:Don't feel bad, Australia

[Cimexus]

No, they can still RC a game even if an R18+ rating exists. R18+ is just an additional category that games may now be placed in.

Some stuff that used to be RC will fit under that category and can now be sold. However, something that was RC before, and cannot fit into the new R18+ classification, will still be RC and thus illegal to sell in Australia.

However the number of games that are likely to be 'truly RC' and not fit into R18+ is pretty freaking small. So yes it's still a huge step foward.

Face it

[Anonymous Coward]

The Australian government HATES video games.

Re:Face it

[dakameleon]

In this case, you can actually blame the newly elected conservatives in the NSW government, possibly trying to appease Rev. Fred Nile & his Christian Democrats in the NSW upper house.