Page 3398 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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further confused for the ACT due to our self-government act which precludes this place from legislating with respect to censorship. Therefore, we here in the ACT apply commonwealth laws and are left with the task of enforcing the scheme. While the constitutional predicament may be complex, the need for this reform is not.
The Greens’ position is that adults should be able to view adult material and that children should not, and that is what this bill will help achieve. Currently there is the perverse outcome where children in Australia have legalised access to games that are restricted to adults in other countries. This strange result comes about by virtue of the fact that the producers of those games mould the game and remove very selected parts to bring it under the threshold and make it just legal in Australia for children. The more sensible result in other countries is for those games to be restricted to adults only. That result will now be achieved in Australia, and that is a good outcome for adult gamers and for children. This is a simple and sensible outcome that means adults will have access to adult material but children will not.
Given the overlapping responsibilities between the commonwealth and the states and territories, it is important to note that the commonwealth put in place its part of the scheme when the Senate passed its half of the legislation in June this year. The legislation received the assent of the Governor-General in July. And so it is now for the ACT to become among the first to legislate for its part of the scheme.
Given the overlapping legislation, it is interesting to read the Senate debate and reflect on some comments made by Senator Brandis and Senator Ludlam, from the Liberal and Green parties respectively, when they responded to the government’s bill. And it may surprise some members to hear me quote Senator Brandis in this place but, nonetheless, he made some interesting comments:
… the average age of Australian computer gamers is 32, with women making up almost half of computer game players. Notably, over 75 per cent of gamers in Australia are over the age of 18.
These facts speak volumes about the make-up of the Australian gaming public. There are many of them in their 30s, and to be telling them that they cannot access the same material as people the same age in other countries does seem strange.
Senator Ludlam made the observation about a 2009 consultation by the federal government:
There were 60,000 respondents to the Attorney-General’s 2009 consultation—
sixty thousand—
98 per cent of which said, ‘Yes, of course adults should be able to view adult content, whether it is online or not.’ So I look forward to the passage of this bill.
I think Senator Ludlam’s comments speak volumes about the need for this bill as well. There are large numbers of people with an active interest, and they overwhelmingly support the proposal for R18+ classifications.
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