The South Australian state election is this Saturday and we need your help!

We are not able to run candidates in this state election so we are supporting our friends the Gamers4Croydon and urge you to do the same.  Attached is our How to Vote card.  Please pass it on to everyone you know who will be voting this Saturday.

We need to send a message that South Australian Attorney General and national wowser Michael Atkinson has to go. He continues to prevent the introduction of R rated computers games and continues a ban on X rated films. He now wants R rated films to be kept behind frilly curtains in SA.

Christian politicians like South Australian Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, are getting  themselves into parliaments in increasing numbers. They bring their ultra conservative Christian ideology with them and force others to live the uptight, prudish lifestyle that they think god wants them to lead. 

If you live in SA stand up and send a message that this guy has got to go. He is not in line with the community and he is forcing his personal opinions on the rest of us.

Please help the gamers4croydon on Saturday 20/3/10

1. Vote for them
2. Volunteer to help for a few hours on a polling booth on Saturday - email me if you are interested! It is good fun.  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
3.  Join us for a Sex Party get together this Thursday 18 March. Meet after work with members and volunteers for a chat, update and a drink.  6pm for 6.30pm somewhere in the Adelaide CBD.   Details will be advised on RSVP - just send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you can join us.   Friends and family most welcome.

Please pass on our How to Vote card.

Fiona Patten
Convener

The Greens, the Australian Sex Party, and the Pirate Party profess support for R18+; Coalition says it will watch Michael Atkinson's movements "with interest."

Two months after the Australian government released a national discussion paper calling for public opinion on R18+ for games, the issue is finally making waves in the political sphere. After hearing the federal stance and the views of all state and territory Attorneys-General, other political parties, including the Greens and the Opposition, have put in their two cents.

The Federal Coalition has stepped forward, with Steven Ciobo, the Opposition spokesman for Small Business, Independent Contractors, Tourism and the Arts, telling GameSpot AU that his party will be watching the upcoming state election in South Australia "with interest."

“The Office of the Minister for Home Affairs has committed to providing the Opposition with a further briefing on the R18+ public consultation that has followed the discussion paper,” Ciobo said.

“The Coalition will consider the feedback from the public consultation. A briefing by departmental officials from the Attorney-General's department have confirmed the introduction of an R18+ classification for video games requires unanimous agreement from the Commonwealth and all state and territory Censorship ministers. The South Australian Attorney-General, The Hon Michael Atkinson MP, has been a particularly vocal critic of the proposal for an R18+ classification for games. We will therefore be watching the upcoming state election in South Australia with interest.”

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said the Greens plan to stay ahead of the R18+ debate in 2010.

“The Greens don’t have a formal position on the absence of an R18+ classification for video games just yet,” Ludlam said. “We plan on being informed by the material that comes through in the public consultation, and we’ll be forming an official stance soon. Personally, I’ve formed a view, and I suspect my colleagues have as well. We want to stay ahead of the debate this year, and we’re already talking to the industry and to people with a range of different views.”

“My personal stance is that [the absence of an R18+ for games] is a real anomaly. I think it’s making the situation worse. We know that in some instances material that should otherwise be classified R18+ is instead diverted into the MA15+ category. That’s a sign that there needs to be some kind of reform. I think we do need R18+ for games, but only on the condition that there is a good look at the way that we classify video games in this country to make sure that some of the very real concerns that have been raised by parents and child protection groups are acknowledged as well.”

Ludlam believes the R18+ discussion paper provides a reasonable summary of the arguments for and against the classification. But he says merely introducing R18+ will not solve problem of access as it applies to children and potentially harmful material.

Ludlam believes the public consultation will result in a solid base of reasonably well-researched support for a change to the system. His views on South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson are not so positive.

“I think the position he took to block the rest of the country from moving forward was really unhelpful, and I don’t think he necessarily provided the arguments to back up the position he took.”

These thoughts are echoed by marginal parties Australian Sex Party (ASP) and the Pirate Party Australia, who both support the introduction of R18+ for games. ASP was launched in November 2008 and became a full registered party in 2009 after the Australian Electoral Commission dealt with a number of complaints about the party’s name. The party now has around 3,000 members and recently participated in by-elections in the Bradfield and Higgins electorates where the party received the fourth highest primary vote and after preference distributions came third overall.

ASP founder Fiona Patten says, quite frankly, that Australia’s classification system is “f***ed.”

“Having worked as a lobbyist and an activist for the adult industry for nearly 20 years, I became demoralised by the fact that in 2008 we had more censorship than when I started,” Patten said. “There is simply no consistency across mediums in our classification system--what is legal in a book is not legal in a magazine, what is legal in a magazine is not legal in a film, and what is legal in a film is not legal in a video game. Personally, I think we should throw out the existing system and start again.”

Patten has been campaigning for an R18+, as well as an X rating for video games in Australia. She believes the argument against allowing these classifications into Australia is unsupported.

“Why shouldn’t adults play adult computer games? It is archaic that one state Attorney-General can stop the introduction of a national classification despite overwhelming community support. I think R18+ for games will actually assist parents in making decisions about what their children play. Of course, the main issue by far is that adults should have the right to choose what they view, read, or play, and the industry should not have to edit their creative product for the Australian market," she said.

Patten says she will support Gamers4Croydon in its bid to unseat Michael Atkinson in the upcoming South Australian state election.

“We will support them in any way we can, and I hope they might do the same for us. The seat of Croydon is a very, very safe Labor seat, so the chances of anyone knocking off Michael Atkinson is slim, but they will get the message out, and they may be able to do some interesting preference deals.”

In a similar vein, the Pirate Party Australia also supports R18+ for games, releasing a press statement earlier this month expressing “disgust” at Michael Atkinson’s stance on censorship. Matt Redmond, a Pirate Party spokesperson, said: “Every citizen in a democracy has the right to question the government, and in doing so has the right to protect himself from censure.”

Source: http://au.gamespot.com/

The Australian Sex Party enjoyed a rejuvenation of sorts at the recent Higgins by-election, securing 3.3% of the vote, but nothing could beat the PR bonanza flowing head-honcho Fiona Patten’s way in recent days over two apparently pressing porn issues.

Two weeks ago, Patten issued a curious statement through sex industry lobbyists the Eros Association stating that the good regulators at the Australian Classification Board had banned the practice of “squirting” in porn films because it didn’t believe the practice of female ejaculation was real. Under current guidelines, takes the film out of the acceptable X category and into the realms of a fetish, potentially drawing the ire of Customs and other heavy-handed government operatives like Stephen Conroy.

The mainstream media, riffing off a related controversy about the banning of small breasts, snapped up the story this morning with the prestigious National Times leaping into to cyberspace on the “Weird politics of small boobs and bodily fluids”.

On Wednesday, the Sex Party, building on the momentum, issued this press release over an apparent Australian Classification Board ruling that a-cup models that looked under-age would automatically refused classification.

The code, and various state laws, include a long-time clause that nude models who “appear to be” under 18 are automatically refused classification.

In clarifying comments to Crikey, Patten said she had attended an information session at ACB headquarters last year in which screenshots from several productions were shown as examples of when the censor would step in. At the meeting, “the underdeveloped nature of the model’s breasts was cited as a reason for the image to be refused classification numerous times.”

Of course, it’s no coincidence that the stoush is occurring against the backdrop of activism Stephen Conroy’s naughty blacklist and the current “Internet Blackout” campaign.

The Sex Party argues that the consequence of the laws in cyberspace would be the banning of not only websites that host the material, but those that link to them — ruling out a large proportion of the sin-obsessed industry’s massive online presence.

The local stoush follows a seven-year controversy over the practice of “squirting” in the United Kingdom. Last September, after years of pressure from “feminist” filmmaker and Daily Sport columnist Anna Span, the British Board of Film Classification relented and allowed the practice to appear in Span’s DVD ‘Women Love Porn’. The fact that male ejaculation is normally allowed lead some local bloggers to accuse the censors of double standards.

Source: http://www.crikey.com.au/

The old political war-horse Fred Daly wrote that in 1944 there was a large reception to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary in politics of Billy Hughes, member for Bradfield, past Prime Minister and prolific political turn-coat. John Curtin, presiding, said “Billy.....why is it that you have been in almost every party in Australia except the Country Party ? “    Hughes replied, “Good God, man, you have to draw the line somewhere.”

Although far less colourful a character the newest member for Bradfield, Paul Fletcher, drew a new line when he chose to totally ignore the existence of the newly created Australian Sex Party (ASP).  In his online survey voters are asked specifically what party they support. It then lists them, strategically placing Christian Democrats and One Nation prominently at the top of the list next to the coalition parties. The Sex Party doesn’t even get a look in. There isn’t even a section for “Other Parties”.

Even allowing for WASP sensitivities it is the political equivalent of a cold shower. Maybe they had already decided that only Labor voters have sex.
In a field of 22 candidates Marianne Leishman of the Sex Party polled third. In a cynical abuse of the electoral system, Fred Nile’s Christian Democrats ran a total of nine candidates. Two of them were at the top of the ballot sheet. Discounting the donkey vote Leishman beat all the nine Christian Democrats combined.

The results of the by-election are telling. The ASP achieved a primary vote of 3.3 % in one of the most conservative blue-ribbon seats in the country. Consider however some of the booth returns. In one large booth in Lindfield, the heartland of the electorate and literally a stone throw from the local Liberal offices, the Sex Party received 4.92% of the vote.

But it was in the north and southern parts of the electorate that whole swathes of booths returned well for the ASP.  The largest booth in Chatswood recorded a 5.15% vote. Booths in the north recorded votes around and in excess of 4.5%.
Peter Hartcher ( “Even sex sells when Labor plays cheap and nasty” SMH December 7, 2009) says that there were three winners in Saturdays by-election, “..... the Liberals and the Greens can plausibly claim success. And so can the Australian Sex Party.”

Whether or not the vote for the Sex Party holds up when Labor does run a candidate is yet to be tested.
New South Wales is certainly fertile territory for the Sex Party. Many of the issues on the party’s agenda are state based and include sex education in schools, legalisation of non-violent erotica and abortion.

The 2011 NSW elections will be interesting. It will be a choice between a government seriously on the nose, led by the avowed Catholic Kristina Keneally, versus a barely competent Opposition led by the particularly un-sexy Barry O’Farrell.

Given the result in Bradfield it is fair to assume that in such a state election the Sex Party could pick up an even higher percentage of libertarian and disaffected voters.  This could have real implications in seats like Menai (ALP 2.7% ) and Camden (3.9%). A concerted campaign within the means of the Sex Party could be waged in the gaggle of Central Coast seats marginally held by Labor including Gosford (4.9%), The Entrance (4.9%) and Wyong (6.9%).

Then there are the Bolshie seats like Balmain and Marrickville that are threatening to swing from Labor to the Greens.
The Liberals and Religious Right can ignore the political landscape as much as they want. At the end of the day politics is a lot like sex. Often it all comes down to preferences.

by Mark Anthony