Australia Censorship News

MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death is a Japanese dungeon based role playing console game.

The Australian Classification Board has just banned the game citing a game feature allowing gamers to caress the breasts of the characters. The Australian censors decided that one of the characters depicts a child and so the game was banned.

Perhaps something the US game rating board missed as they gave the game a Teen (13) rating.

The censors explained:

The game features a variety of female characters dressed in provocative clothing with their cleavage emphasised by their clothing revealing the sides or underside of their breasts. The five main characters in the game are Machina Mages , females who pair with robot-like guardians in order to do battle. Four of the five,  Estra, Flare, Maki and Setia, although of indeterminate age, are all adult-like, with voluptuous bosoms and large cleavage that are flaunted with a variety of skimpy outfits.

The fifth main character, Connie, is depicted as child-like in comparison. She is flat-chested, under-developed physically (such as the hips), is significantly shorter than the other characters and wears her hair in pigtails. She also has a child-like voice, wears colourful child-like clothing and appears naive in her outlook on life. She is also referred to as a girl by the other main characters. In the Board's opinion, the character of Connie depicts a person who is, or appears to be, a child under 18.

The game features use of the Playstation Vita's touchscreen feature, that allows the player to touch or run their finger across the touchscreen in order to make any female character's breasts move in response. The chest area of Connie is viewed moving slightly when this occurs, which is significantly different from the greater movement viewed when one of the four adult-like female characters is touched.

Australia has resumed its censorship campaign against a book that provides information on euthanasia and assisted suicide to the elderly and the seriously ill.

The Peaceful Pill Handbook , written by euthanasia advocate and former doctor, Philip Nitschke , is published in Holland but copies have been seized on arrival in Australia. People who have ordered the book receive instead a note from customs which reads:

Customs prohibits importation of documents relating to suicide ... The importation of a device designed or customised to be used by a person to commit suicide is prohibited absolutely.

Zola Ortenburg received such a note and has written to the attorney general, George Brandis, to express her concern at the book being banned. The letter says:

Why should I, as a mature Australian woman, not be allowed to read what I choose?

Talking about this with my husband he reminded me that Adolf Hitler ordered books should be destroyed in 1933. How far away are from this happening in Australia?

Does this mean that Australian Border Force has an oversupply of staff or perhaps should they be better utilised in stopping the ever increasing importation of drugs and there ingredients not to mention the guns and everything to do with them.

Author Philip Nitschke said.

These seizures are a new and worrying development and I'm taken aback by yet another attempt by the federal government to interfere with the choices and decisions of elderly Australians. The heavy handed use of censorship to restrict access to the Peaceful Pill Handbook, now the world's best selling manual on accessing a peaceful death, shows how fragile any notion of free speech is in this country.

Australia is the only country in the world that is trying to restrict access to this book.

The Australian Classification Review Board has unanimously determined that the film X-Men: Apocalypse is classified M (Mature) with the consumer advice Frequent action violence and infrequent coarse language . The film was previously rated MA 15+.

MA 15+ would be something like a 15A in UK terms, whilst M is an advisory rating that would be called PG-15 in the US.

For comparison, in the US the film was rated PG-13 for sequences of violence, action and destruction, brief strong language and some suggestive images

New South Wales Premier Mike Baird has rejected calls to ban humerous slogans on the Wicked Campervans fleet, saying:

• I don't think it's something that the state government should be getting involved in.

The statement was in response to local councillor Duncan Dey who wanted to wipe the usually sexist slogans off the vans or ban them from council caravan parks.  Dey proposed the erection of signs saying Van drivers, your wicked slogan is not welcome in Byron Shire could be erected at Byron Shire entry points, and the vans could be banned from council caravan parks.

Meanwhile the annual Australian music festival Splendour in the Grass , held near Byron Bay, has also taken a stand against the campervans. The festival website says:

If you're booking a campervan, please steer clear of sexist slogans! You know who you are. It's 2016, get with the program!!,

Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm said councils and wowsers in northern NSW should leave Wicked alone. He said:

Personally, I find authoritarians disguised as hippies or feminists far more offensive than any slogan on the back of a van, but I don't seek to ban them.

Representatives of the Eros Association, an Australian adult trade group, told a Senate committee looking into the so-called nanny state , its members were suffering because of restrictions on what they could sell.

While they couldn't sell films depicting certain consensual sex acts, people could still stream them online. Eros business manager Joel Murray told a hearing:

They simply download it or order it from overseas. That's money that doesn't enter the Australian economy. So from an economic perspective it doesn't make sense.

He also criticised the limited list of acceptable practices and fetishes, with many of those not included discriminating against the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

The restrictions of businesses selling adult entertainment are so severe that they are proving unviable. There were only two businesses in the ACT (Canberra) that had X18+ licences and they soon would give them up, he warned. The X18+ licence fee in the ACT ranges from $15,000 to $31,000, with having single films classified costing more than $1000.

The association also raised concerns about state laws that ban the sales of porn in all the major states. Adults can buy and possess X18+ films (with the exception of Western Australia), but only adult stores in the ACT and Northern Territories can sell them.

The Australian Greens political party has proposed plans to stop the promotion of sports betting.

Greens leader and spokesprat on gambling and sport, Senator Richard Di Natale unveiled the Greens' policy to end the constant barrage of sports betting ads, by treating them in the same way as tobacco advertising.