Australian Government Prepares for Further Reform to the National Classification System

Minister for Home Affairs Jason Clare has today announced he will introduce what his office has described as “the first stage” of reforms to the National Classification System into Parliament during the winter session. These reforms look set to change the way games are classified in Australia.

The reforms were presented to the Standing Council on Law and Justice meeting in Darwin yesterday. All State and Territory Ministers agreed to the changes.

The reforms implement some of the recommendations that have come out of the Australian Law Reform Commission’s National Classification Scheme Review, undertaken last year.

Ministers agreed to seven proposals, including the use of automated classification decision making systems (starting with a pilot for mobile and online computer games), an update to the guidelines that will prevent 2D and 3D versions of films or games having to be classified twice and a change to the rules that will allow minor modifications to be made to games without further classification.

In September 2011 the ALRC released a Discussion Paper that put forward 43 proposals for classification reform, including the proposal that only computer games likely to be classified MA 15+ or higher must be classified. The ALRC conceded that “[t]here are arguably too many games developed and released each year, and developed by too diverse a range of persons, to formally classify before they are sold or distributed in Australia.... Rather than exempt all of these games from the classification obligation, or introduce a category of 'small online content product' or 'small and simple computer game', the ALRC proposes that only those games likely to have a higher classification should be classified.”

If an automated classification decision making system works for mobile and online games it should be a positive step towards a more self-regulated environment.

Ministers will consider further reforms at the next meeting of the Standing Council on Law and Justice in October.

Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can find him on IGN here or on Twitter @MrLukeReilly, or chat with him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.

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