Queensland will miss the R18+ games legislation deadline

The state will miss the date to pass its own legislation about R18+ games, but it won't stop them from going on sale anyway.

Over at Kotaku, Mark Serrels has picked up a bit of weirdness regarding the passing of R18+ classification legislation in Queensland.

Essentially, the Liberal MP Ray Stevens and the manager of government business for the state has said that the 1 Jan 2013 date won't be met, but didn't explain why.

But the real weirdness came when Kotaku contacted the Department of Justice in QLD, which said that the lack of legislation wouldn't actually stop the sale of games — but that there just wouldn't be any laws governing it. As Serrels says:

Since Australia has previously had no R18+ rating for video games, there is absolutely nothing in current legislation that prohibits the sale of R18+ games. Retailers are forbidden from selling ‘unclassified’ video games, but, in this case, the games will be classified — they’ll be classified under an R18+ rating that simply isn’t referenced in any legislation. This means that R18+ games can be sold, but there is literally no law to manage that process — no details on punishment for sale to minors, no set rules on how the games can be displayed. Nothing.

It's a great article, and we recommend you pop over and have a read.