WA Greens confirm opposition to R18+ game classification
September 1, 2008 – 7:02 pmGreens member for Western Australia’s North Metropolitan Region, Giz Watson, has confirmed with me via email that the WA Greens do oppose the introduction of an R18+ game classification.
She says that the Greens do not want computer games that have high levels of violent content, sexual objectification of women and drug references available to people under 18 and they support regulation that would achieve this.
I promptly pointed out to Giz that games with strong violence are already available to people under 18. Many are squashed into the MA15+ category. Introducing an R18+ classification for video games would provide a more accurate classification system and restrict adult games to adults.
The Greens goal to keep these sorts of games out of the hands of people under 18 would be far more achievable with an adult game rating, not without.
For those of you in WA (or anywhere for that matter), it might be worth politely sharing your thoughts with Giz as she is responsible for these matters in Parliament. Her contact details are available from her website.
If game censorship is important to you, the Liberal party looks to be your best bet on polling day.
5 Responses to “WA Greens confirm opposition to R18+ game classification”
An R18+ classification includes a prohibition (in the statute books of every state of Australia) against R rated material being sold or even made available to anyone under the age of 18.
This applies to films, VHS tapes and DVDs. There are strict penalties on the statute books of every state in Australia – including Western Australia regarding this.
At one stage someone in Western Australia indicated that they were considering withdrawing from the Federal/State system of classification and censorship and “going it alone”.
This option is open to any state in Australia given that the States and not the Commonwealth of Australia are responsible under the Constitution for matters of censorship and the Federal/State agreement by which all states agree on the classifications of the Classification Department of the the Federal Attorney General’s Department is a mere convenience.
Gamers have it tough. They are unable to openly flout the outdated legislation with regards to pornographic content – much of which falls into the hands of young people under the age of 18 in New South Wales anyway.
If anyone wishes to express themselves on matters of censorship they can become contributors to the collaberative nocensorshipaus BLOG.
http://ausnocensorship.blogspot.com/
Signing up is easy and posts can be made using the free Thunderbird email client.
Bob
By Bob Bain on Sep 2, 2008
From Helen Vnuk (2004) as retrieved from LiveJournal and copied in part to the no censorship blogspot forum mentioned earlier…
http://ausnocensorship.blogspot.com/
From “in the Realm of the Censors” 2004…
“A lot of people want to blame John Howard for the OFLC’s decisions, but I don’t know whether things would be very different under a Labor government. There are very strong conservative forces in both major parties at the moment, as well as some vocal conservative independents, and that’s why a lot of censorship rulings don’t reflect the contemporary population’s views. To me, the solution is to get an independent organisation to do some proper community consultation and come up with a new set of guidelines that would, I would hope, be less restrictive than the current ones.”
Helen Vnuk 2004 (paraphrased)
By Bob Bain on Sep 2, 2008
Heard back from Giz yet? I’d be interested to hear the Greens’ response to the contradictions you point out in their policy.
By Greg M on Oct 31, 2008