After reading about how the New South Wales govt wanted to reclassify games as R18+, MCV looked into how possible that actually was.
The back story is that MP Greg Donnelly wants to push some MA15+ games up into R18+ when the new age rating becomes available, about 50 games all in all.
MCV contacted the Attorney-General's Department to find out how this was possible.
The part of the act (which Kotaku suggested may be the case) which Donnelly is seeking to enact is this part:
Under the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995 (Cth), the Classification Board may seek to reclassify classified content on its own initiative or at the request of the Commonwealth Minister responsible for classification matters. A participating State or Territory Classification Minister may also request a reclassification through the Commonwealth Minister.
So it isn't so much that the games will necessarily be pushed to R18+ by some abstract political force, but rather that, with the new classification in mind, the games can be re-submitted upon request by an MP.
This doesn't preclude the possibility, however, that the games, when re-submitted, will still warrant an MA15+ rating, but it seems unlikely given the motive behind the push.
A game which has been re-classified due to a New South Wales MP, however, will become re-classified for the entire country, so this move, if successful, could indeed see swaths of games become R18+.
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