John Rau Spokesperson: R18+ Reports Are “Misleading”

We’ve just gotten off the phone with the David Washington, spokesperson for John Rau, who has expressed concern about reports stating that South Australia would go ahead with an R18+ rating regardless of whether there is a consensus at the upcoming SCAG meeting.

According to him, South Australia would only go ahead with an R18+ rating if the Federal Government were to make the changes required on a statutory level for them to do so.

“The Gamespot story is a bit misleading,” claimed Washington. “We wanted to clarify that if the Federal Government decides to go ahead with an R18+ rating we will follow suit. But if the Attorneys-General leave without a consensus, and the Federal Government decides to drop the issue, we won’t be going ahead with an R18+ rating.

“But, that said, from all of the signs we’ve been hearing at a Federal level, it looks like the Federal Government is going to go ahead with R18+.”

We also spoke to Ron Curry, CEO of the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association, who claimed that the logistics of having separate states with separate ratings would be a “logistical nightmare”.

“For videogame distributors it would be extremely difficult – especially when games rated MA15+ in some states are rated differently elsewhere. They would require different advertisements for different states, different print ads, different TV ads. It’s difficult to see how it would all work.

“And what happens when they distribute the games? The games would have to have different classification logos on the box. Logistically it would be very difficult.”

It’s possible that there has been a slight misreading of John Rau’s statements, and possibly a slight misunderstanding on the Attorney-General’s part on the process of how an R18+ rating would be introduced. But, on a positive note, it seems that the Federal Government is already making preparations for an adult rating regardless of the outcome of the SCAG meeting.

Somehow, eventually, it seems we may finally receive an R18+ rating in Australia.


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