Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to second this motion. I went to a gig a few weeks ago at the Metro in Sydney—Julia Jacklin. I do not get to see a lot of music at big Sydney venues. I live a long way from the city and I tend to make the most of the local music scene that we have in places like Katoomba in my electorate of Macquarie—that is, if I have a chance to head out. But I did go to the Metro. My son, Harry, is Julia Jacklin's bass player, so there was a good reason to see them play for the last time in Sydney before they headed to Europe for a few months. It was not just me who went. It was a whole bunch of family and friends who helped fill the absolutely sold-out gig. We went with tickets on my phone, pretty confident that we had real tickets that would get us in the door, and indeed they did.

But what must it feel like when you have travelled for several hours to go to a gig and get there only to be told that you just cannot come in? For people in my electorate, just to go to Sydney can mean booking a hotel for the night because of the poor train service, which can add hours and hours to your journey at the other end of the night. And so to get to the door, only to be told, 'Sorry—you've got dud tickets,' would be devastating. Imagine the same thing happening if you have bought tickets for a three-day music festival and you get there and you are turned away? This is what we are seeing happen in Australia.

Of course, the problem of dodgy tickets has always been with us; scalpers have been around for as long as musicians have been performing. I am not quite sure how we got tickets for gigs like Australian Crawl and Cold Chisel in the eighties, but I seem to recall a long queue and giving someone the cash or turning up on the night and hoping that a scalper would give you tickets and that they would be legit! It has really changed since then.

I remember the pressure of trying to buy my first online tickets. I recall punching the rehit button repeatedly to get tickets for my then 13-year-old son to the 2007 Red Hot Chili Peppers Stadium Arcadium World Tour Sydney show. We did it, but the stress was huge! The big problems that we are seeing overseas are being exacerbated by bots. To be clear: a bot is a computer program that automates the ticket-buying process, completing it faster than a human can—including searching for tickets, filling in identity details and payment information. It lets the ticket scalpers purchase large quantities by quickly running multiple transactions at the same time.

In the early 2000s I was just competing with other human beings; now you are competing with robots. It means those same tickets can go online for resale really fast, while the general public are still trying to make a sale from the primary site. That is why the official site might sell the ticket for one price and the unofficial, but very official-looking, site has it for $50 or $250 more.

Sites like viagogo are a huge part of the problem. They are branded as official sites but they actually allow the selling of fake tickets and tickets that have been sold multiple times over. Also, viagogo seems to play very loose with the details of the show, and the member for Watson has highlighted the problems with the Paul McCartney tour. Rumours are running hot that McCartney will tour Australia, so if you see something flash up as an ad on your search engine saying, 'Paul McCartney—Perth,' then you are very easily going to be confused and deceived by the resale site.

It does not really matter which site we are talking about; the search engines and the fake ticket sites are a real problem. I would encourage people to jump on to see. What strikes me about them is the high-pressure sales tactic. You find yourself in a queue with a stick figure moving through and with the clock ticking—the pressure to make the decisions fast and to sign off your purchase is really on. It does not encourage you to check the details out thoroughly, and for less-regular ticket purchasers this is a disaster waiting to happen. Already, tickets for the Dan Sultan concert—also at the Metro—are still available through the reputable sources and are on these viagogo sites.

We should not ignore the fact that major search engines are making profits from the advertising. It is time the government explained in detail what they are doing to ensure that if someone buys a ticket to a live music gig that they then have confidence they can turn up, get in and see the musician they have paid to see. With live performance being such a key part of a musician's income stream now we really need a live music industry for visitors and locals that everyone can access with confidence. Our own live music industry helps us tell Australian stories, not just here but to the rest of the world. We need to make sure that people who turn up to these gigs have a great time supporting Australian and visiting talent.

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