R18 Still Not Working According To South Australian Attorney General

SA Attorney General Wants R18+ Video Game Classification To Be 'More Rigorously Applied' - Kotaku Australia

The rejoicing when previous SA Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, retired and his replacement John Rau came out in support of an R18+ rating was kind of short lived at the time when he then announced a plan to just stick R18 stickers on top of the MA15+ logos at the time.

Thankfully this plan didn't come to fruition... well we now know that is pretty much the extent of the "changes" (refer to Saints Row for the full run down)... and we haven't heard too much from him, until now.

Mr Rau has stated his great concern in the number of games still getting an MA15+ rating so it appears his belief that this rating should automatically be considered as 18+ game, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a system that is meant to inform about what is appropriate for different age groups.  He feels that if the regulations are not "more rigorously applied" than all games released in South Australia will go through a second level of scrutiny.  No word on how this is going to be paid for though.

This wouldn't be such an issue if the Attorney Generals didn't have veto power on any classification reforms.  There have been some positive, though very small, steps in the right direction but the Australian classification system still needs a lot more work.  It would be nice to think those with the final say have a good understanding of the issues and the ability to reconsider their positions but with people like John Rau still hanging on to a notion like this, well, all I can say is good luck Australia, we're going to need it.