Laws can only be as smart as our pollies – unfortunately

It's a tragedy that in Australia one Attourney General can hold the whole country to ransom with the blinkered view that doing nothing protects our kids.

Meet Michael Atkinson the South Australian AG. Young Michael comes from that tired old school that think that sticking your head in the sand can make the problem go away. In this case R 18+ classifications for games.

According to Michael, if you don't have the rating, the games don't get into the country and thus don't get played by kids.

Luckily history has given us a few examples of this sort of thinking. Does anyone remember the US experiment with Prohibition? That worked. Well, the Mafia reckon is was a good idea at any rate.

Recently this character appeared on Good Game which gets a run on ABC2 TV and I was looking forward to the piece expecting at least some reasonable defence of his position. No such luck. Every ones else's data was attacked as industry inspired even though further examination showed it to be independent. Meanwhile, his first attempt and seeking public opinion was withdrawn when he realised the Public wasn't with him on the matter.

His reason? "Only minor changes really. Nothing major." Well why bother with the change? Was there a misplaced comma or something?

To say the AG did his case no end of damage is an understatement. He appeared to be more focused on revenge against some hostile emails he had received rather than being a bloke weighing up the pros and cons of the situation. He also made the comment that if he let it pass one of the other AG's would stop it.

Yeah?

Which one?

Looks like another tired old bull dust story to defend the indefensible.

And here comes the clincher. I dropped an email to him about his poor performance on Good Game. The response from his office was to request my postal address to get a reply.

Wonderful. Another pollie who doesn't use email. So Daryl Williams (Federal AG some years back) was not alone in his technophobia. How can a man who doesn't use the technology (nor study history for that matter) be allowed to block progress?

I hope the Voters in his Electorate are a bit more switched on than young Michael. South Oz must be due for an Election some time soon.