BlogMichael Atkinson who was the Attorney-General in the state of South Australia has resigned from the front bench. This means that while he still retained his seat after the recent state election he will no longer be the Attorney-General of South Australia. Why does anyone care? Because as previously stated Atkinson was the only man out of the country's Attorney Generals (one for each state and one federal) who publicly opposed the introduction of an adults only rating for video games.

Australia still does not have a rating about MA15+ (restricted to those over 15 unless accompanied by a parent or guardian) for video games, and according to the law anything that is above this rating is rated Refused Classification (RC) and is effectively banned nation-wide.

This is fantastic news as someone I did not and could not have voted for (Atkinson resides in an entirely separate state) is no longer apparently single-handedly preventing legislative change that I believe is required for a great many reasons.

For reference, Atkinson suffered a 14.3% swing against him despite keeping his seat. He will be remembered for not only becoming infamous with the gaming/wider media community but also for attempting to remove anonymity from the internet in relation to an election only to realise that the Australian Federal government laws that contradicted this plan overrule his little state game. This led to him swiftly removing the law.

The government issued a call for public input which received 60,000 submissions around the issue of an R18+ rating being introduced for video games. These submissions are currently being assembled for a future Attorney-General meeting to discuss the issue again.

Anyone that doesn't live in Australia, instead of deciding this doesn't apply to you and dismissing this blog post, think about what it might mean for your nation if the government laws prevented you from playing adult games (either at all or with liberal censorship).

Note that this event actually occurred over a week ago, aside from site upgrades I have been busy with assignments for university. The new AG in SA apparently does support the rating change, so let's hope for the best.

Sources

• news.com.au