Atkinson takes a backwards step in the right direction

Mmmm, apt.

Happy Sunday everybody – Michael Atkinson, the face of the “video games are part of the cancer that is killing /kids/” campaign and probably the biggest obstacle to Australia finally getting an R18+ rating for games, has announced that he is retiring from the front bench of the South Australian Labor government.

While Atkinson will remain in parliament on the back bench, this does mean he’ll be giving up the post of state Attorney General and therefore will lose his power of veto on the game rating issue.  Which is a good thing, since in the past he’s claimed he would block an R18+ rating regardless of public opinion or the outcome of the public consultation process being run by the Federal Government.

This also means, of course, that we’ll never get to find out if he would’ve excercised his wicked-l33t backflipping skills on the issue (like he did for internet censorship).  Pity.

Just to add insult to injury, the Adelaide Now story announcing the news is carrying a poll in its sidebar asking readers “Are you happy that Michael Atkinson will no longer be South Australia’s Attorney General?”. At the time of writing the score was 427 yes, 19 no.  Seems he’s not really going to be missed.

We probably shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves because there’s no guarantee that Atkinson’s replacement is going to be any better for those looking for a little sanity in our games rating systems, but for now let’s just savour the moment.

In related news Kat Nicholson, who was standing against Atkinson as the Gamers4Croydon candidate, secured around 3.7% of the vote according to the South Australian Electoral Commission.  While this isn’t perhaps the wave of support they might have hoped for, it is significantly less than the “less than one percent” Michael Atkinson controversially predicted they’d recieve.  Fellow G4C candidate Chris Prior also looks unlikely to secure a seat on the state Legislative Council at the current time, although an outside hope remains with approximately 75% of the ballots counted.