Atkinson says gaming is bad like cancer
News from Jae - Saturday, 06 March 2010 @ 12:48pm
An approximate $33,000 annual grant had been given to the Australian Council on Children and the Media, trading as Young Media Australia, by Atkinson's party.
In support of this a psychologist, Dr Warburton, said that “It[Video Gaming] is much greater than the effect of smoking on lung cancer,” on a TV news program this week.
The money is supposedly used on a project called Know Before You Go
"It's the only project that's funded by him and it's been funded for years now. And I think good on him for helping parents to understand the classification system better," she said.
"That doesn't mean that we owe him anything in terms of what we do with campaigns.
"We have projects – which we do if we have funding – and then we have campaigns, which are funded by nobody."
Ms Biggins said the Know Before You Go project filled in gaps not covered by the existing classification system and received praise from parents.
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[url="http://blogs.theage.com.au/digital-life/screenplay/2010/03/08/yourturnamis.html"]http://blogs.theage.com.au/digital-life/screenplay/2010/03/08/yourturnamis.html[/url]
I read this opinion piece this morning and recommend it to others as well. I talks about the “It’s much greater than the effect of smoking on lung cancer" comment and the study they drew it from (a complete misrepresentation of the study - surprise, surprise). Whether you agree with the study or not (Gamers4Croydon have a go at it [url="http://www.gamers4croydon.org/news.php?id=26"]here[/url]), is up to you. But what is important is to recognise how the study has been so grossly misrepresented, and no doubt will continue to be in the future as we get closer to the next SCAG.
On the other hand "gaming is worse than the effect of smoking on lung cancer" is such an outrageous claim that I wouldn't be surprised if it actually huts the anti-R18 position more than it helps. Of course if Atkinson were to veto an R rating again and site this as one of his reasons, then people should be rightfully outraged that policy is being made on such blatantly false and disingenuous information. But somehow I wouldn't put it past him.
You know what, I really could get behind this. IF instead of insiting fear into the public about videogames it was spent on educating parents about the rating system for videogames/movies. But there I go on another day dream 
Look at those tax dollars be put to good use.
And my 2010 ass-hat of the year award goes to! ........
Oh, they're not biased or anything.
"It's good on him for helping parents to understand the classification system better".
Yep. Helping them to understand that an R18+ rating will not only fail to protect their children, it'll actually rape them, film the proceedings, and then make the story into some obscure Japanese game that could only get an X rating in Australia.
