Earlier this year, the state of South Australia announced that it would move to introduce R18+ for games without waiting for a nationwide consensus should the federal government decide to ignore the need for a unanimous agreement and pass the adult rating at a federal level. A few days later, the Australian Capital Territory announced its intent to do the same.

　　Now, Ex-Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett has voiced his concerns over South Australia and the ACT "going it alone" on the adult classification for games. Speaking to GameSpot's sister site ZDNet Australia, Bartlett said that he would have liked to see through the introduction of R18+ for games.

　　"Not having [this classification] is immature…it does harm to young people because parents don't have the information they need," he told ZDNet. "I think the lobby who are opposing R18+ are burying their heads in the sand. People are going to get access to this stuff, anyway."

　　Answering whether he thinks it is a good idea for some states to go ahead and introduce the classification while others can choose not to, Bartlett dismissed the idea as "silly."

　　"We're living in a globalised world; to break the classification system to a state level is silly. We have to have a national classification system for games. I think [R18+ for games] will eventually get passed, and I award [Federal Minister for Home Affairs] Brendan O'Connor for stamping his foot a bit--I wish I could be there to support him. I call on attorneys-general across country to do the same, and not cave in to lobby groups and look at the evidence."

　　Last week, Brendan O'Connor made public the proposed R18+ guidelines, which will serve as the new law should R18+ for games be passed at the upcoming Standing Committee of Attorneys-General (SCAG) meeting in Adelaide in July. The guidelines show that the R18+ rating for games would be applied to titles deemed to feature high-impact classifiable elements and would allow "virtually no restrictions on themes; violence except where it offends against the standards of morality, decency, and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults; implied sexual violence, if justified by context; realistically simulated sexual activity; virtually no restrictions on language; and drug use and nudity are permitted."

　　In order for R18+ for games to be introduced, all federal, state, and territory attorneys-general must agree unanimously to these guidelines; a recent GameSpot AU poll found that the majority of Aussie states support R18+ for games.

　　Today, the Australian Sex Party also congratulated the federal government on releasing the guidelines with party president Fiona Patten saying that the creation of the new category will have far-reaching effects for censorship reform in Australia and could herald significant policy shifts within the current enquiry into the federal Classification Act being conducted by the Australian Law Reform Commission.

　　"Under the new draft guidelines, high-level depictions of sexual activity will be allowed as long as they are simulated and not real," Patten said. "The vast majority of computer games are simulated and do not use real footage from films or still images but the levels of fantasy and imagination are often way above what would normally be in an X-rated film."

　　GameSpot AU will be reporting live from the SCAG meeting in July. For more on the issue, visit our previous coverage.

　　Watch the original ZDNet interview with David Bartlett here.