New Minister in Charge of Australian R18+ Push

If you’re like me and currently located in Australia, a country well known for thinking that grown adults are children and shouldn’t be allowed to play ‘grown up’ games, you’ll be interested to know there’s a new guy in charge.

In the cabinet shuffle today, the formal Federal Minister for Home Affairs, and public supporter of R18+ for video games, Brendan O’Connor, was renamed minister for Human Services and minister Assisting the School Education.

The new Minister for Home Affairs is Jason Clare, the former Minister for Defence Material and member for Baxland. This means he inherits O’Connor’s portfolio, including R18+ for games.

Despite O’Connor’s public support for R18+, it’s unknown at this time what Clare’s stance on the issue is.

Australia currently has no R18+ rating for games, causing many games that would be rated as such to either be classified as MA15+ (sold to anyone over 15 years of age,) or refused classification – which essentially bans the game from sale in Australia.

Games which have been banned from Australian release include Mortal Kombat 9, Left 4 Dead 2 (which was later given classification after changes to the ragdoll physics and gore levels) and Postal 2. Fallout 3 was originally refused classification due to drug use, causing the developers to change Morphine to Med-Ex before the final release – a change which can be found internationally.

In July this year, Australia's federal, state, and territory censorship ministers reached an in-principle agreement to introduce an R18+ classification for video games in Australia.

[Source: Gamespot AU]