ACCM Media Release November 8, 2012

National Classification Scheme: Time to Start again - Professor Elizabeth Handsley, President of the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) is calling for a complete rethink of Australia’s classification scheme (NCS) for films, DVDs, and computer games. Professor Handsley is Professor of Law at Flinders University and a national expert on media law, as it affects children. Professor Handsley explained ‘that one of the chief purposes of the NCS is to protect children from harm, and yet it is not based on evidence or research about what is likely to adversely influence children at different developmental levels’.  She continued ‘the review of the NCS undertaken by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) between 2011 and 2012 was a missed opportunity to re-examine the very foundations of the system. Instead, it focussed on who would classify what in a convergent media environment’.