George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The idea behind the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment (R 18+ Computer Games) Bill 2012 is to bring the classification categories for computer games into line with existing categories used to classify films and other media. Under the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995 the different types of classification for computer games are G for general, PG for parental guidance, M for mature, MA15+ for mature accompanied and RC for refused classification. Within the current system, the highest legally available classification category for a computer game is MA15+. Games which are not suitable for a minor to play are currently refused classification. Unlike film, video games do not have an R18+ classification. Games would be in this classification for violence, language, nudity, drug use or adult themes. Although the act has been reviewed several times since 1995, an R18+ classification for computer games has not been added. In order for this classification to be added to the act, all state and territory attorneys-general, together with the Commonwealth Attorney-General, must unanimously agree to its introduction. This has only recently been agreed upon.

With no R18+, there is evidence that games meant for adults were rated MA15+, making them available to minors and confusing parents who try to do the right thing. The opposition understands that shoehorning has occurred of videogames which might usually be classified R18+ into the MA15+ category. Clearly adult games, we believe, should be restricted to adults. It is more appropriate that they are classified in this new category rather than being shoehorned into the lesser MA15+ category. With this proposed change, parents would have a better idea of what a game is like. Adults would be allowed freedom of choice and children would be prevented from purchasing adult games. Some games which would ordinarily be classified R18+ are being modified and classified within the MA15+ category. With an R18+ classification, these games could be placed in the most appropriate category for them.

The current classification system not only fails to allow adults the right to choose; it also falls short in protecting minors from potentially harmful or disturbing content. A huge number of games rated MA18+ in Australia have been rated for 17- or 18-year-olds in similar and like-minded countries, such as the United States and many of the European nations. On top of that, a handful of games have been edited to earn their local rating.

Contrary to some claims, the lack of an R rating for games makes it easy for children to access adult content. Legislating to allow an R18+ category will give consumers clear information, a clearer choice and more confidence in the games they buy for themselves and for their children. On most gaming consoles it is possible to activate parental controls. These controls allow you to set limits on the amount of time and the classifications of games that can be played. Using these controls can assist in enforcing family guidelines on gaming and protect younger gamers from inappropriate material. Some gamers illegally access games that would be classified R18+. It would be better if they were legally available in Australia with the appropriate restrictions, which is what this bill achieves.

In recent years, the lack of an R18+ rating for video games has seen popular titles refused classification because they are unsuitable to be played by 15-year-olds. It is interesting to note that 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. In some cases, publishers of games that are refused classification choose to produce a censored version for the Australian market. Others simply cut their losses and do not introduce the game into Australia. This is bad for the Australian games market, which is growing strongly and is forecast to grow at a rate of about 10 per cent a year, with forecasts predicting that it will reach $2.5 billion annually by 2015. Those are very significant numbers that show what an important industry computer gaming is becoming in our country.

The opposition recognises the contribution of the game development industry to the Australian economy. We also note that more than 88 per cent of Australian households own a device for playing computer games. Australia has 25 major game development studios, which export over $120 million worth of product a year. Australia is the only Western country that does not have an R18+ classification for games. The United Kingdom, the USA, New Zealand and all of the member countries of the European Union have adult classifications for computer games. There is a risk that, if this issue cannot be resolved, Australian gaming companies will be adrift in what is now a $70 billion worldwide industry and that Australian games players, the backbone of the future games production industry, will either be cut out of the leading edge of the creative industry's professions or forced to break customs laws in order to access the games they want to play, which, as I have just noted, others around the world have ready access to.

I want to highlight a couple of real-life inconsistencies from the current classification regime with three games that are available in Australia at the MA15+ level yet are restricted to adults in other like-minded countries. The game called Fallout 3 was initially refused classification by the Classification Board for realistic depictions of drug use. After some minor edits, it is now available to children aged 15 and over in Australia, while like-minded countries restrict the game for sale to adults only. Even with these changes, Fallout 3 is still rated for people 18 years of age and above in Britain, New Zealand and across Europe. In the United States it is rated M17+. In Australia, however, this violent and adult game is legally available for children as young as 15, simply because Australia lacks the capability to restrict games to adults only. Grand Theft Auto IV is the latest in what has been described to me as the infamous adult Grand Theft Auto series. Publishers Rockstar self-censored the game for Australia, making minor cosmetic edits regarding sex acts and blood splatter. It is now available for sale in Australia to children aged 15 and up, while being restricted for sale to adults only in other like-minded jurisdictions. House of the Dead: Overkill was not refused classification in Australia. It contains excessive violence and a high amount of profanity and is available for children aged 15 and over. Meanwhile, overseas rating agencies have classified this game for adults only.

Those, I am told, are just a few examples of games that probably would have been more appropriately classified as R18+, but in Australia were shoehorned into the lesser category of M15+. Clearly, once this new category comes in, it will allow adults to access material—or at least those adults whose tastes run to those types of activities—as is appropriate and as is their right to do so, whilst making sure that it is not available for people under the age of 18, for whom this material might be inappropriate to view. It should be noted that this bill was sent to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs for inquiry and the committee recommended that the bill be passed. The committee said that it was satisfied that the evidence demonstrates overwhelming support for an R18+ Restricted classification for computer games. The committee further noted that the bill's aim was not controversial. Rather, it sought to align the existing classification system for computer games with the system that applies to films. The coalition endorses the findings of the committee.

The passage of this bill will no doubt be welcomed by adult gamers all across Australia. It is my understanding—or at least I have been informed—that the industry has been waiting for this change for some time. The coalition view is that the change is a sensible measure as an R18+ category currently applies to other forms of entertainment and all this bill does is bring computer games into line with the way we classify films and other materials, and clearly it makes sense to have one uniform regime for all these different forms of media rather than singling out computer games, where the classification has not been previously available. The coalition therefore do not oppose the passage of this bill. The coalition therefore do not oppose the passage of this bill through the parliament. We welcome the fact that our classification regime will now be a uniform regime, classifying all media according to a single set of criteria and, importantly, making sure that computer games with what might be considered to be questionable content for people who can access the MA15+ category will now be restricted to the R18+ category, as is appropriate. Then the people who are eligible to purchase material within that category can make the decision as adults about what games they purchase and play.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to add some comments on behalf of the Australian Greens that will effectively align with the contribution of Senator Brandis. It is remarkable that, after such an extraordinarily long period of time, finally the parties have come into alignment in this place and are recognising, formally in legislation, that adults should be able to access adult content. So it is a good day: finally, we have got there. The Australian Greens are supportive of the aims of the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment (R 18+ Computer Games) Bill 2012 on the basis that adults should be able to view content whether or not it may be appropriate for children.

Senators would be aware that this issue has been under discussion for a great many years. It has been the subject of a number of extensive surveys and consultations. We note, of course, the government's haste, given the bill was introduced into the House of Representatives on 15 February and that the committee was expected to conduct an inquiry in 11 working days. But this issue has been extensively canvassed over a long period of time.

Bringing games into Australia's classification system and aligning all materials into the one classification system does make sense, at least at this stage—and I will add some comments towards the end about the limits of the system, as pointed out by the Australian Law Reform Commission in its recent inquiry. Harmonising the system to clearly label and classify games will assist parental supervision of children and minors, as long as the interpretation of various categories is consistent and appealable. That is what I believe the government has done in this case, and we now have a system that meets those basic benchmarks.

The importance of educated and informed parental supervision is only enhanced, in the light of research in the academic and professional community, on the impact of immersive games on children. I think the gaming industry has pointed out the ambiguity in the literature. I think the position we would normally take, whether it be a health or communications related bill, is that we err on the side of caution—we take an approach that is basically precautionary, and I think, again, this bill allows us to do that.

We have a responsibility, while the jury is out on the psychological impacts on young people of immersing themselves in what can be extraordinarily violent environments for hours and hours at a time, to deliberately, carefully protect children, and a classification system that is clear and appealable can only assist in this task.

The committee noted that the actual substance and consequence of the bill lie in the guidelines that will determine how content is classified. A number of submitters who were opposed to the bill, and opposed to creating this tier of classification, pointed out the void where those guidelines should be—and that a lot of work is going to need to be done to make sure that the games that Senator Brandis raised in his contribution, for example, will in fact be reclassified. But, in the absence of the guidelines, we will simply have to make sure that that occurs. The Greens will evaluate those guidelines when they are published to ensure that the process offers the opportunity to re-evaluate and re-classify the material that is currently inappropriately available in the MA15+ bracket. Nearly all submitters, including those representing gamers, acknowledged the introduction of an adult category should be used to re-classify material that had been wrongly classified or amalgamated, as Senator Brandis indicated. The WA Children's Commission and others made specific suggestions for the guidelines, which I think are worthy of consideration. When those guidelines are published, we think that that should probably go back to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee.

The ALRC has done us something of a service in looking not just at how we classify games that are distributed according to traditional means, whether they are purchased on DVD in shops or downloaded in online form, stored and played off a computer platform—because we know, just from the development of smart phones, apps and tablets and so on, that it is rapidly becoming an impossible task to identify and then classify, according to Australian standards, the hundreds of thousands of game-like apps and things that are out there. It is simply going to swamp and overwhelm the system. I think the ALRC report is worth reviewing for how it proposes to handle that in the same way that we handle, for example, standards on social media platforms and video file-sharing hosting services—that is, you actually require the audience; you start to rely on the audience to identify content that is offensive or should be age-locked or taken a look at. I think that is something we need to point to.

I am glad that we have got past the suggestion that some overarching government censor be filtering content before the public get to see it. It is something of a relief, actually, that that agenda appears, for the moment at least, to have been set aside from the debate on classifying computer games. This is an industry in relation to which—because of, I guess, a mix of legitimate concerns, but also moral panic because the medium is so new—we have tended to focus on a particular and in fact very narrow strand of the industry. This is an industry that has enormous potential for innovation, for creativity and for Australia to really mark out a niche. We are a very connected, very wide society. We have skills, we have talent—and, I think in one sense, the fact that we have not had an adult category has been a block to that creativity. We are looking to government support for this industry—in the same way as we offer producer offsets for film productions—that involves creative and immersive online entertainment or educational products. We have a big role to play here. I think Australian creative people can really make a big contribution if we give them the support that they deserve.

The industry did go out of its way to make sure that its views were known, which is why it is surprising that it has taken so long for us to get here tonight. To be honest, I was not sure that we ever would. There were 60,000 respondents to the Attorney-General's 2009 consultation—60,000!—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 congratulate the government for bringing it forward, and acknowledge also that this is a delay not of the Commonwealth's making—this was held up for a very long period of time, I believe, by the South Australian Attorney-General and the need for these sorts of matters to proceed by consensus through COAG. We got there in the end, so I look forward to voting on this bill.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to indicate my support for the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment (R 18+ Computer Games) Bill 2012. I participated in the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry into this legislation as, I believe, did you, Madam Acting Deputy President Crossin. Although I began with an instinctive belief that we should not be widening the net so as to allow more of what one might call offensive material to be available in regulated form to the general public, particularly children, I did come to the view expressed in this debate by both Senator Brandis and Senator Ludlam that it is better to regulate a particular product for which there is evidence of some quite heavy market demand to ensure that it is possible to provide some limits on what might be available to younger people and even to adults in certain categories of product and to ensure that we offer some satisfaction that people are not buying things which are inappropriate for viewing under any circumstances.

Unlike Senator Brandis, who obviously spoke about these games in what I think would clearly be an absence of any personal experience of them, I have two teenage sons and they are both enthusiastic users of these games and so I can profess to some small experience of how they operate. I have to confess the sorts of games that we are talking about here in the R18+ category are not to my taste or, I suspect, to the taste of most members of this Senate, but it is important to acknowledge, as has been stated in this debate, that we have here products which are very widely sought out by younger people in our community, noting as Senator Brandis did that the average age of computer game consumers in this country is approximately 32 years of age.

It is also very clear that we have had a number of problems with a system which has regulated to the highest level at MA15+ and not to the equivalent level of R18+, which other countries administer. It is true that, with the passage of this legislation, some games which have hitherto been refused classification—that means banned—will now be available in this country. Some might regret that and wish that they were not available. It is also true, however, that some games which properly would have been classified as R18+—available only to adults—have until now, for whatever reason, received an MA15+ classification perhaps because they experience very heavy consumer demand. It was felt that they ought to be available in some form at least in the Australian market. We should not be engineering these sorts of outcomes based on getting around loopholes or inadequacies in the law. We should be attempting to classify material according to the appropriate age group that should be viewing it and, where possible, we should be placing appropriate limits on the sort of material we are talking about, and so minimising the interaction between violence and sexual references. I accept that there is good and bad in this, but I believe that it is better to ensure that we keep games and other material out of the hands of children to the extent that we possibly can, certainly in categories below the age of 15 and categories above the age of 15, or between 15 and 18. I think it is also important to provide some level of assurance that a quality control, if you like, has been imposed on this process.

As a believer in capitalism, I know that where there is a market people will attempt to satisfy that market. At the present time, we are seeing a lot of penetration of that market by material which is not regulated. These days it is possible to get almost anything available over the internet. As a parent, I might not particularly like the sorts of games or things that my children might want to amuse themselves with, but I am greatly reassured if I know that the material that they have legally purchased somewhere has been regulated in a way so as to exclude certain content that might be considered to be completely unacceptable. I would rather that my children were able to access material which had been regulated by the Office of Film and Literature Classification and was available to them rather than something which might be obtained over the internet. That is the point, I believe, of a system such as this.

We need to be realistic about what people expect to be able to see. These days there are wide expectations about what people, even younger people, should be able to look at, and completely ignoring that desire is dangerous and unrealistic. I believe that the government's proposal for an internet filter—which, although it has not been spoken about much in recent years, is still the policy of the Labor government, of Senator Conroy—represents quite an unrealistic attempt to regulate material. A measure such as this is much more realistic because it does hold the prospect of being capable of being regulated and of being applied in a way which is generally fairly uniform. There are always some people who will step outside the system. They will know how to do so and will be able to step outside the system, and no doubt there are some people of quite tender age who are capable of doing that. But if we provide a pathway which is easy and accessible but which is regulated, I think we are doing our younger people a favour.

I might say that these arguments, Madam Acting Deputy President—and I am particularly aware of your own background as a representative of the Northern Territory—are also arguments in favour of the preservation of the X category for erotic material. Given that there is so much which is deeply offensive in relation to sexual content available on the internet, I think there is much to be said for having a category of material which consists only of non-violent erotica available legally for Australians to purchase if they are intent on using such material. So I endorse comments of other colleagues in this debate. I understand that a Bond University study not long ago found that nine out of 10 Aussie homes had a gaming console of one sort or another in them. There is a very large degree of interplay between different forms of media and if something hits the market which people seem to want it is very easy for people to know it is there and get hold of it. The proposed guidelines are certainly an improvement and I think it is important to be able to offer adult users of computer games some assurance about the content of what they are looking at.

There is a question about enforceability. There is some evidence that other aspects of the system of regulation of video materials are not well enforced. This may reflect the fact that there is some unrealism about the way in which the system is constructed, that in the case of X-rated material it is theoretically only available in the two territories but, as we all know, it is widely available throughout the states. Why? Because enforcement is not really undertaken at all. I hope that with a stronger, more effective regulatory system in respect of computer games we will not see that problem occur, that we will be able to say that there is a legal product to consume and those who attempt to peddle material which is not classified should be very strongly sanctioned by the operation of a law which is rigorously enforced.

I commend the government for this process. It has taken a long time. As a former member of the censorship ministers council myself, I know it is extremely difficult to get change to happen through that process, but this change is one which is worth while and I think will help improve the level of protection for vulnerable people in our community who use these sorts of products.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No amendments to the bill have been circulated. Before I call the minister to move the third reading, does any senator wish to have a committee stage on the bill to ask further questions or clarify further issues? If not, I call the minister.