What's going on here is a 2-fold dynamic. Firstly, in a world increasingly marred by violence in every corner, Australia remains a country of extremely low violent crime, high public order, and very high standards of living, and for obvious reasons would like to keep it that way. The second dynamic is that they've apparently bought into the junk science that declares violent videogames to be intrinsically influencing youth violence world-wide. Of course, therein lies the problem. There is virtually no provable causality between playing a game and committing acts of violence. In societies like the US with extremely high instances of violence and high videogame use, the evidence is at best circumstantial. To whit - does anyone actaully violent crime would be affected at all were violent games completely removed from society? I have yet to hear even the most ardent anti-videogame nut make that claim, as there is absolutely no basis whatsoever. In fact, evidence has pointed to the contrary - as violent videogames become more prevalent in American society, youth violence has been steadily dropping over the same time period.

So Aussies, get on the phone with your elected officials and demand they educate themselves on this!

This comment was edited on Sep 24, 2009, 19:14.