Following the most recent Australian parliament cabinet reshuffle, there was a bit of uncertainty around the future of the proposed introduction of an R18+ rating for videogames in Australia. Previous Minister for Home Affairs Brendan O'Connor had been a driving force in advocating the change, but we had yet to hear the new guy's thoughts on the matter and it's been quite some time since we've heard of any new developments at all.

GameSpot-AU have reached out to the office of the new Home Affairs Minister MP Jason Clare (formerly Minister for Defence Materiel) for an update on proceedings and have learned that the bill is currently planned to land in the House of Reps in parliament's first session, commencing early February.

According to Gamespot, Clare's office explained that the bill would require support of cross-bench MPs in the lower house, but did not elaborate on why they expected that the Federal Opposition would vote against it. Should the bill pass the lower house, it will then require support of either the Greens of Coalition to succeed in the Senate.

As a somewhat trivial issue among more important topics currently circling Australian parliament, it's not likely that we'll get much more indication as to which way each of the parties and independent MPs might lean until the debates actually happen, but stay tuned for any more significant developments in this tired tale as they develop.

Hopefully this won't get overturned quicker than a truck on a NSW freeway :(

Always feels like we are never getting anywhere

Waiting to see it get struck down by the "Think of the children" crowd who are not educated on the matter. You know the kind. Buy their 7 year old MA15+ games and have the nerve to complain.

Knowing our c*** politicians, some bright spark will come up with an idea to further politicize this and all the "save the children" f***tards will be out in force.

Its a hard time to get new policies through with no clear majorities. There's no reason to pretend this will just happen. I'd be amazed if it passed as is. I'm surprised the opposition aren't threatening to overturn it at the next election if it does go through, that's their style :\

I will be amazed if it doesn't. Government has already said they support a new rating that will help "protect" the children. Because who would say no to doing that?

Does anyone care about an R rating for games anymore? I think most people are sick of politicians constantly having "talks" about bringing this in. It's much easier to order it online than bother with all this crap.

And even if they DO "think of the children" and bring out the R rating, I'm worried that it will be at the detriment of all the 15-17 year old gamers who suddenly can't buy the next CoD game because the new rating system just moved it up to R18+.

Everyone's so f***ing caught up with the bloody children that they're ignoring the REAL problems. Bad parents and adult gamers getting fubar'd.

But then again, welcome to politics *eyeroll*.

I hope that happens WirlWind, it'll increase the average age of CoD players and get rid of the little s***s.

reLapse, sure it'll help in that way, but it'll still keep tons of games from being allowed in the country, which is why alot of the older gamer types wanted an R rating in the first place.

It should be as much about providing adult entertainment as it should be for "protecting the children".

But instead, if they do it that way, nothing will actually change except even LESS money will go into the games industry from Australia, making us even less of focus in the industries eyes. I mean, we don't exactly provide a massive amount of income as is, they'd have even less incentive if we suddenly lost all the cod kiddies. *shudder*

reLapse, sure it'll help in that way, but it'll still keep tons of games from being allowed in the country, which is why alot of the older gamer types wanted an R rating in the first place.It should be as much about providing adult entertainment as it should be for "protecting the children".But instead, if they do it that way, nothing will actually change except even LESS money will go into the games industry from Australia, making us even less of focus in the industries eyes. I mean, we don't exactly provide a massive amount of income as is, they'd have even less incentive if we suddenly lost all the cod kiddies. *shudder*

Because blacatvision are so strapped for cash to make there next cod4 map pack.

Australia is a low market for many game devs, heaps of companies just refuse to release the game here due to our stupid laws as gamers in this country are treated like 15 year olds, isnt it something like the average gamer in Australia is 28?.

I'm just saying that there will be even less incentive to bring games out here if a large chunk of our already insignificant gaming market went away (The kiddie / teen market) due to the new R18 laws.

And yeah, while the average gamer might be older, the kiddies are still seen (in the eyes of most of the un-gamer population) as the main focus of games, so no-one is thinking of the adults in all of this.

Last I heard of the R18 law they were talking about introducing, it did nothing to help the adult gamers out, it just shifted everything up a rating (pretty much). Stuff that was RC'd before would still be RC'd even with the R18 they were talking about bringing out.