AU R18+ Rating Plans Put On Hold Due To "Interest Groups"

Dexter Herbivore writes "Australian gamers are yet again left disappointed by their government's response to a lack of an R18+ rating for games. Gamespot reports that Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor has blamed 'interest groups' for swamping the public consultation with pro-R18+ submissions. From the article: 'A strong response from gamer groups in the Australian Federal Government's R18+ public consultation has led Censorship Ministers to claim that more views from the community are needed before a decision into the introduction of an R18+ classification for video games can be reached.'" Reader UgLyPuNk adds that support for the new rating is coming from unexpected places.

Re:Oh for the love of..

[Capsaicin]

One hurdle after another, it seems.

Yes it seems very difficult to understand what the hold up here is.

If the claim is true that 86% of submissions "came from retailer EB Games and the pro-R18+ organisation Grow Up Australia" as TFA states, by which I assume that many people submitted the industry's 'standard' submissions, then that should really fast-track the process. Why not simply treat all those submissions as just the two they really are? That's 86% of the reading done right away.

No matter how often the same submission has been made, either the arguments it contains stand up or they don't. This claim of swamping makes no sense at all.

If on the other hand TFA is just BS, and there are somewhere approaching 60k individual submissions, then yes, that could take a while to get through.

shock at response.

[enter to exit]

It appears that EB Games (a popular game retailer) and the pro-R18+ organisation Grow Up Australia were responsible for the 86% of the 59,678 submissions.

I don't know what that means, does that mean that EB and "Grow up Austrlia" employees managed to pull out 51323 submissions? Or does it mean that EB was able to motivate it's customers to actually do something and the government freaked out that anybody other than the church priest and the "elderly gentlemen who thinks a remote control is a sign of the apocalypse" bothered to submit anything. The gaming community can be very vocal (10 minutes of Xbox live will prove this!)
Either way member of these organizations are very likely to the gamers anyway and are definitely entitled to their own submission

The article says that 34 community, church, and "other groups" lodged submission against the rating. Is that all the "do gooders" managed to accumate?
I just find it ironic that the organizations that systematically covers up child-rape allegations has anything to do with judging what is morally acceptable behavior.

The head of EB is arguing that they had to voice their opinion "en masse" or they would have faced the "risk of interpreting the issue as a niche problem that didn't deserve the full attention of the government." I guess that's a valid point, given the choice, politicians would rather do nothing about this and let things stay the same, it doesn't really effect them. This isn't a vote-deciding issue (with the lackluster opposition to the AU Internet filtering I'm beginning to think nothing is a vote-deciding issue for us, nothing like that great Australian apathy eh?)

Interest groups?

[DrXym]

I think this is just another case of a government reaching a conclusion and then ignoring results that don't concur with it. Maybe gamers are an "interest group" but only in the sense they are people most affected by a draconian and silly rating systems. They still represent the opinion of a large percentage and cross section of the general public across all lines of race, gender, sexuality, age and religion.

I believe the government is fudging and it's hard to see why exactly. Grown ups should be allowed to play grown up games if they so wish.

Am I reading this correctly?

[mwvdlee]

Is that minister claiming that there will not be an R18+ rating because people want the R18+ rating?

Re:Oh for the love of..

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure we'll be outraged for about 24 hours then back to business as usual.

However Aussies routinely break the law when they see fit. Our cultural heritage is disobedience and recalcitrance more than rebellion.

Translation: there's popular support for an R18+

[Rogerborg]

So, hey, Moonbat Mothers Against Everything, ball's in your court. When's the last time your lobbyists took me out to lunch, in a nice dark private restaurant? I could really go for a bucket of caviare-and-non-sequential-bills right now.

Re:"interest Groups"

[PopeRatzo]

hypocrites running a nanny state

I have a question:

Here in the US, we used to have these things called "R" ratings on movies, which meant they wouldn't let anyone under 18 see the movie without a parent or guardian. These were the days before the internet, divx, or even VHS.

Yet, I doubt a single 15 year old didn't see a movie they wanted to see because it was rated R.

Do they honestly think that having a special rating which prevents 13 year-olds from buying GTA V is going to keep them from playing GTA V?

What are older brothers (or in my case, older sisters) for, anyway?