No vote was taken on the issue of adult ratings for video games in Australia at a meeting of the various censorship ministers from the different government levels. However, a draft which suggested a possible introduction of the problem in the next meeting in July was passed on to the state, federal and territory attorney-general(s). It had been unanimously agreed by the state, territory and federal attorney-general(s) to draft a set of basic guidelines for the initiation of adult ratings for video game classification in Australia three months ago.
Today, at the Standing Committee of Attorneys General meeting in Wellington, New Zealand, these guidelines were presented to the censorship ministers, and that’s about all the progress that the R18+ rating issue made there. As the New South Wales government is currently acting just as a caretaker due to the state election that is coming up; there was no vote to decide upon the introduction of the rating. Now, the next date for the SCAG meeting is for the 21st of July, and that is the earliest that the adult R18+ ratings can be approved in Australia.
Brendan O’Conor, the Federal Minister for Home Affairs and a supporter of the new classification system, said that he hoped that his other two state and territory counterparts act in the interim by seeking their government’s positions on the new ratings system before the next meeting starts in July. The drafting of the R18+ guidelines was completed with the help of evidence from a number of sources which supported the same. The public consultation of the federal government resulted in a large majority of the respondents supporting the introduction of the new adult classification for video games. The review of the government also showed that there was no tangible link between violence in games and aggressive behavior.
