Aussie gamers have been celebrating after a controversial politician who held game censorship in the dark ages down under has finally stepped aside.

For ages the common sense move to allow an adults-only rating for video games in Australia has been blocked by South Australia's Michael Atkinson. Atkinson has been the South Australian Attorney-General since 2002 and has frustrated attempts to introduce an R18+ rating for games. Australia is the only democracy in the western world not to have an adults-only rating for video games. Last year six games were refused classification for exceeding the limits of the MA15+ rating.

The federal Attorney-General's department asked Australians to have their say about the proposed introduction of an R18+ rating for games. Atkinson is the only classification minister to publicly oppose the introduction of an R18+ games rating and his views blocked the laws coming in. He has previously told South Australian parliament that he knows the lack of an R18+ rating denies adults choice but he was thinking about protecting children.

Of course if you banned everything because it was harmful if a kid might get their paws on it then you end up banning everything, but apparently that did not occur to him. Atkinson is not resigning because he is hated and there is a campaign against him, although there was. He cost taxpayers about $200,000 when he settled out of court a defamation case brought against him by an Adelaide magistrate.

The defamation case came about after Atkinson used the words "daft" and "delusional" after the magistrate’s pointed out that people might get lighter sentences because of overcrowded jails. In the current election Atkinson was forced to scrap legislation which required people posting internet comments to use their real names.

On the whole we would have thought that anyone who used technology more advanced than a pocket calculator would be happy to see the back of Atkinson.