A meeting of Australia’s attorneys-general today resulted in an agreement to introduce an R18+ classification for games, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Australia routinely misses out on games altogether or requires developers to go and produce a watered-down version simply because there is no rating that covers a certain tier of adult content. That content ends up in its own non-rating called “Refused Classification”.

Since Australian retailers can’t sell content without a classification, and there aren’t classifications for a great deal of the content most Western countries deem acceptable for adults, games like Left 4 Dead end up banned. It’s a backwards state of affairs for a country that likes to think of itself as free, liberal, and highly secular.

Labor’s proposed Internet filter has been pitched on the basis that it would block refused classification content — not just child porn and the like as Senator Conroy likes to have the public believe. Labor put the filter on ice while a review of the classification system took place.

And while the outcome of today’s meeting is a positive one, it’s also an indication that the review is starting to approach its final stage and the censorship project will be taken off hold again soon. Protestors of the filter who’ve taken a break should get ready to start making noise again soon.

For the life of Australia’s National Broadband Network project, the official line has been that it’s not technically possible for NBN Co to filter the Internet, as a wholesaler of “layer two” Internet services.

The insistence that the Australian government’s broadband corporation isn’t capable of performing filtering is meant to help us swallow the bitter pill that is Labor’s Internet filtering project. The government’s filter is meant to make child pornography inaccessible, making pedophiles harder to track and catch, and (as proven in trials) blocking hundreds or thousands of websites belonging to innocent people and businesses.

The government line that NBN Co can’t filter the Internet itself has inferred that, with retailers like Telstra and Optus having to implement mandatory filtering on their own there would be some level of oversight to the government’s filtering mandates, should the filter come into effect.

Such oversight is no doubt much to the displeasure of Senator Stephen Conroy, the man behind the filtering project, Labor’s Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, and general laughing stock of Australia’s tech-savvy population.

But Mark Riley, chief technology officer of ContentKeeper Technologies, says that it’s perfectly possible to filter traffic on layer two services: they’re already doing it, according to Josh Taylor of ZDNet.

Riley tells Taylor that ContentKeeper filters out sites on Interpol’s blacklist for users of Canberra ISP CyberOne while the data is still in layer two, before it comes out onto layer three where data is normally filtered.

This could come as a surprise to NBN Co, who are possibly now jumping for joy with the news that they’ll be able to leave one grubby mitt in Senator Conroy’s pants while another gets to the work of censoring the Internet.

But, like a good cynic, I think it’s likely the inference that NBN Co wouldn’t be able to touch our traffic was a political move, one to throw us off the scent of Labor’s real plans that could have certainly put a damper on enthusiasm for a national broadband infrastructure of back-breaking speeds.

Those a little more apathetic towards the Great Firewall of Australia who have clung to the mantra that such filtering, should it creep beyond the bounds of child pornography, would be easy to get around will soon be removing the pie from their faces. As Riley told ZDNet, the workaround that allows users to avoid filtering by changing their DNS is ineffective when filtering occurs on layer two.

For all the talk of gold standard checks and balances that prevent governments from using filters to their own advantage and agenda, history shows that a government who controls information can never resist temptation.

With this sort of power in NBN Co’s hands we’ll be one flip of the coin away from an Internet where you can’t read about topics like gay marriage on the Internet because the government’s stated position is in opposition to them.

As the Victorian state election heats up, the current Premier revealed yesterday plans to provide Apple iPads to all doctors working in Australia’s public health system.

Although this is a minor point in the Labor party’s plan for improving the health care system, it shows a concerted effort to embrace new technologies and put them to good use. Premier Brumby said the Labor party is committed to giving doctors the tools they need to provide the best health care.

“As technology evolves, so do the tools that our doctors need. We will provide $12 million to buy iPads for every doctor working in Victoria’s public hospital system, so they have easy access to time-critical clinical information at a patient’s bedside”

The opposition did not make such a specific promise of new technologies, but did include plans in Sunday’s media release to adopt “appropriate mobile technology”. The Coalition also promised to spend $4 million on a hospital performance website where the public can access performance data for metropolitan hospitals. The introduction of assigned numbers for patients to ensure the correct records are being used for administering health care was also supported by the Coalition in the media release.

“The Coalition supports the introduction of a national E-health identifier and its incorporation into the Victorian health system, with appropriate protections and ironclad privacy controls”

Premier Brumby has previously shown enthusiasm for Apple iPad, ordering 500 for Victorian hospitals to be sent out in January 2011, and buying over 500 for Victorian schools earlier this year. The Victorian government has also created a Government 2.0 action plan and set up an interactive eGovernment website to allow participation and interaction with Victorian residents.

Could this be a step in the right direction for the Victorian state government, as both parties jump at new technologies, or is it just a ploy to get younger generations on board?