Contentious, conservative calls for new laws concerning modern media and the Attorney-General's department seem to go together like horse and carriage.

Australia's Attorneys General are seeking to increase government surveillance powers (with less accountability), introduce wide-reaching data retention practices and force people to give up their computer passwords. Not surprisingly this sent the online world into a spin but it's hardly the first time that the Attorney-General's department has made such contentious claims. In this article we'll look back over some of the more contentious clashes with the world of technology and modern media. First up are games:

Michael Atkinson was South Australia's Attorney General and is most well known for blocking an R18+ rating for video games "because it will greatly increase the risk of children and vulnerable adults being exposed to damaging images and messages." However, the viewpoint proved counter productive and backfired spectacularly.

Over the past ten years, while video games strove for and achieved increased impact and cinematic realism, over 90 per cent of adult-themed video games were given an MA15+ rating and ended up in the hands of Australian children to a greater degree than any other Western country. Some examples include the purposely-disgusting, foul mouthed, splatter gore, adult-oriented game, House of the Dead: Overkill which is so gross that you can watch the link on YouTube but I'm not going to describe it; there's also, comedy-cum-action 'Carry On Gangster' games like Saints Row: The Third which features street battles over hookers and zombies using giant, floppy, baseball-bat sized purple dildos; Grand Theft Auto is a gangster game which is essentially an interactive version of the hit gangster series, The Sopranos, plus adult-rage-inducing interactive war games like Call of Duty and many many more were all given the same rating as James Bond films and comparatively-tame alien blasters like Halo - much to the chagrin of mothers all round the country. Even now there's no R18+ rating because of Atkinson's original stance and all of the Attorney's General still need to agree to introduce it next year.

That's certainly no formality, however. New South Wales Attorney General, Greg Smith, initially became a hero in the gaming community when he backed an R18+ rating for games. However, this was short lived as Smith started to waver on his stance before back-flipping completely and slamming games by citing bizarre examples out of context. He then pushed for a rewriting of the proposed R18+ guidelines which ignored the government's own literature review and heavily endorsed contentious claims made by 'moral-panic' lobbyists. When his office was asked why his stance had become so different, we were told that no further discussion would be made.

Meanwhile, South Australian Attorney General John Rau wanted to ban MA15+ games altogether - but only in South Australia. This eventually evolved into a rule of keeping MA15+ games on sale but having to be 18 to buy them. How this would be achieved in a world of online shopping, or what punishments would be in place if a shop sold an MA15+ game like Halo: Reach to a 17-year-old, has never been explained.

More recently, Attorney General, Nicola Roxon caused a storm when she held secret meetings between anti-piracy lobbyists and industry officials. She refused to allow public scrutiny of the proceedings and even redacted information when it was eventually obtained through Freedom of Information channels. Senator Scott Ludlam, who is arguably the politician most in tune with online culture and freedoms (as recently demonstrated by his slamming of ACTA), was quoted as saying, "What I find the most offensive about that, is that they locked the people out of the room that actually matter."

What was most perplexing, however, was the Attorney's General position that the discussions relating to online copyright infringement - arguably the most widely-discussed issue on the internet of the year - were not in the public interest.

Meanwhile, as Crikey puts it,

The Attorney-General's Department has unveiled proposals for a massive expansion of intelligence-gathering powers including data retention, the surveillance of Twitter accounts, forcing people to give up computer passwords, ASIO stop-and-search powers, government authority to direct telecommunications companies about infrastructure and the power for ASIO to plant or destroy information on computers.

It's not the first time the Attorney's General have tried to push similar measures. As Bernard Keane puts it:

"Attorney-General Nicola Roxon attempted to initiate the review in May when she wrote to the Committee proposing an inquiry into range of proposals to "update" various aspects of national security legislation via a very rapid review to be conducted by the end of July. It is understood that the committee baulked at both the proposed timing and content of the proposed terms of reference."

Ludlam wrote on Wednesday:

"The data retention scheme - #ozlog - long-pushed by the Attorney-General's Department is on the agenda. This extreme proposal is based on the notion that all our personal data should be stored by service providers so that every move we make can be surveilled or recalled for later data mining. It comes from a mindset that imagines all Australians as potential criminal suspects, or mindless consumer drones whose every transaction should be recorded and mapped."

When the matter was further discussed today, online reaction was once again damning. Again, Senator Ludlam was one person who railed against Roxon's plans for data retention and even retweeted the following:

@j2dk: Hey Nicola Roxon, George Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning, not a guidebook. #ozlog

Further reading on what is being proposed and the problems with it, can be found here, here, here and here.

A conservative agenda

The Attorney's General once claimed to "not entertain lobbyists of any kind" but they subsequently held behind-closed-doors meetings with both the controversial Australian Christian Lobby's Jim Wallace and Elizabeth Handsley of the Australian Council for Children in the Media - both of which frequently released misleading an incorrect information regarding video games. More recently, they've held secret meetings with AFACT, one of the most contentious lobby groups of them all due to its highly-funded lobbying for US entertainment industry interests and inaccurate claims. Meanwhile, Fiona Patten who heads Australia's adult entertainment industry group, Eros, was banned from giving evidence on classification and censorship to an Attorney's General SCAG meeting despite arguably being the most relevant person in the country due to her high involvement with the industry which was most affected by the laws.

The fiercely conservative element of the Attorney's General is reflected in Australia's classification guidelines which are ruled on by the Classification Board which comes under the Attorney's General department. In Australia, the majority of adult sexual content (porn) is technically illegal thanks to incredibly strict guidelines which have seen films banned for featuring a character with a black eye and a newspaper headline describing a kidnap (implied violence). Geordie Guy describes the make up of the Board and the related Review Board thus:

"Members of the classification board... are not politicians per se, but either the Attorney General or the Minister for Home Affairs appointed each of them. They represent everyday Australians in so much as out of the 12 of them almost all are tertiary educated, white, Australian-born members of a range of other boards and community groups. Nine span from their 30s to 50s with only two members in their 20s. Teenagers or older Australians are entirely unrepresented on the board excepting the director who doesn't disclose his age but admits to two grandchildren. Classifications (or the refusal of one, ie bans), are handed down by panels of as few as three members that the director handpicks from the board under his exclusive powers...

"Four of the seven-member classification review board are middle-aged women with arts degrees; of them, three combine it with law. Two have degrees in psychology. There is only one man. All of them have rather extensive community group exposure (like other boards and committees); two even served on the same board (the Young Women's Christian Association, of which all media-consuming Australians are surely members at least in spirit)."

Much has been made about the conservative Christian makeup of the Attorney's General themselves. Atkinson was a renowned Anglican, conservative Christian, Robert Clark of Victoria openly endorsed contentious views on abortion and homosexuality, NSW Attorneys General, John Hatzistagos and Greg Smith, are also reputed conservative Christians. There's certainly evidence of a conservative agenda on show but to what degree is not entirely clear.

Official role

According to the official Attorney General website:

"The Australian Government Attorney-General's Department serves the people of Australia by providing essential expert support to the Government in the maintenance and improvement of Australia's system of law and justice and its national security and emergency management systems."

However, it's tricky to see how games classification hasn't been anything but marred by individual Attorney's General foisting their own, uneducated agendas upon Australia. It's also questionable whether wisdom and expertise was exercised when inviting contentious lobbyists into secret meetings.

A set of values is also listed on the website. Some are as follows:

Ethical - The APS demonstrates leadership, is trustworthy, and acts with integrity, in all that it does. Respectful - The APS respects all people, including their rights and their heritage. Accountable - The APS is open and accountable to the Australian community under the law and within the framework of Ministerial responsibility. Impartial - The APS is apolitical and provides the Government with advice that is frank, honest, timely and based on the best available evidence.

The regular secret meetings with lobbyists, special-interest groups and law enforcement somewhat fly in the face of the accountability claims.

As for impartial decisions which are "based on the best available evidence" how does one explain the lobbyist-influenced games classification guidelines?

Conclusion

While the above is hardly an exhaustive list of Attorney General actions, it does sum up their most of their recent dealings with modern media and technology. It is worth highlighting the actions of these incredibly powerful, behind-the-scenes law makers who have the power to evade the public spotlight and media scrutiny on a whim.

Are the above examples at odds with their actions in the wider world? Or are they enough to fairly state that our Attorney Generals are at odds with the realities, morals, ethics and expectations of media in the modern world as well as their own guidelines?

There's something of a live discussion about the current data retention policies happening here and using the Twitter hashtags #natsecinquiry and #ozlog. You can find the lengthy proposals, here.