Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

But there are a few things that I want to get on the record. First of all, as I speak, Victoria, as we know, is in another lockdown. It's No. 6 of the snap lockdowns that we've had in the past year. What's becoming clear is that the federal government's botched vaccine rollout and its refusal to create a safe national quarantine system means that we'll be living with snap lockdowns like this for some time to come. Live entertainment and events businesses had only just gotten back on their feet. It's been great to see the social media and people going to events again, but I think a whole lot of people, and the government in particular, have not understood the commercial reality of these businesses.

The government's response, first of all, was to design JobKeeper in such a way that, if you were going to exclude as many people in the arts and entertainment sector as possible, you'd design it exactly the way they did. Yes, it's true when the minister says, 'Oh, but the majority of the people in the sector got onto JobKeeper.' Yes, that's true: the majority did. But the entire sector was shut down, so that leaves you with many hundreds of thousands of people being left with nothing. Instead of having a systematic approach to dealing with it, which a wage subsidy would have been if it had been properly designed, the government have gone down the path of a grants program. A grants program does help some businesses—I get that—but it does not provide any help for what's happening with snap lockdowns.

With snap lockdowns, businesses that have invested in an event going ahead then discover that they have to return the cost of the ticket sales and pay their liabilities. Now, that sort of model just says to people, 'You're better off not taking the risk.' These are commercial ventures. The only reason some of them are not currently commercial is good public health decisions that are being made by government. Think about it this way: when Bluesfest was cancelled last year, it had pandemic insurance because you could have pandemic insurance. You can insure against an event that has not yet commenced. You can't ring up during a cyclone and take out insurance for the current cyclone; they will only give it to you for the next one. Pandemic insurance works the same way. So when Bluesfest was cancelled the second time, they could get insurance against future pandemics, but not against COVID-19. Other festivals are now working their way through the question: do they go ahead at all? Going ahead means it may well be an event that is uninsurable, that is entirely outside their control, and if it occurs they will go bankrupt.

There is a really simple policy around this. We've been calling for it for a long time. Some of the minor parties, including representatives in the chamber right now, have been calling for it. Industry has been calling for it as well. It's simply to provide for the events and entertainment industry the same as what's provided for the film industry. Now, for the film industry, the government understood and got it right. There's a whole lot of big-investment Hollywood productions coming to Australia, and if they get suddenly shut down because of social distancing, then that will cause a huge cost to them and create a risk that may prevent those productions coming to Australia in the first place. These are not businesses that need a grants program, but what the government did—we called for it, they did it, and we welcome it—was effectively provide an insurance program called a Business Interruption Fund; a fund of $50 million that effectively moves from movie to movie. To date, I'm not aware of a dollar of it actually being needed to be spent, but the fact that it's there means business can take the risk.

Think about what has happened over the last week in Victoria. The RISING festival—a new festival just starting. It gets into its first day and has its first night under the blood moon. It's going brilliantly, then it's entirely shut down. It's not just the organisers that lose money. Think right down to every individual food stall. These are food stall businesses that set up their little marquees or drive in their vans, buy all the food and all the produce in advance, and suddenly discover there will not be a single customer—not because their product wasn't good enough, not because they weren't commercially viable businesses, not because they'd organised things poorly, but simply because of a public health order that was beyond their control.

The government's answer keeps being, 'Oh, well, maybe we'll have a new grants program.' A grants program will never fix this problem. This problem can only be addressed by taking away the element of risk that is entirely beyond the control of business. These businesses have not said, 'How dare you put in a public health order that says we need to shut down.' They get it. They're good citizens. The people who buy their tickets are good citizens. But just think of the logic. The government's refusal to do for the events and entertainment industry what they have done for the film industry means live entertainment and major events are now asking a question that the film industry doesn't have to ask. They're simply asking: is it worth rolling the dice in the knowledge that there may be an event entirely beyond our control and uninsurable which, if it occurs, means we go bankrupt? That is the real-life commercial decision being made by major events organisers right now. It affects them, it affects every individual stallholder. It affects the bands and performers themselves. It affects the cleaning contractors. Whether or not they have that risk, it then affects the confidence of people buying tickets to events, because they're not quite sure if they'll get their money back if it's cancelled, all because the government won't do for Australian major events what it's willing to do for Hollywood.

We welcome, because of the jobs associated with it, what the government has done for the feature film industry with overseas productions coming here. But what sort of cultural policy says, 'We'll provide the insurance to make sure that Hollywood is willing to take a risk in Australia, but we won't provide that opportunity for any of the festival organisers or the major events organisers?' It has had less publicity than the RISING Festival, but, on the same weekend, there was supposed to be an event organised by an entrepreneur I've met—a young woman who has been running major events for baby shower expos and wedding expos. The One Fine Day expo was meant to be held on the weekend. It was cancelled without notice for the second year in a row. It's not something she can get insurance for. At first, it looked like she had lost the venue because of the centres needed for the vaccination rollout organised by the Victorian government. She then found a venue. It was all organised, and then, for the second year in a row, the whole sense of optimism was taken away at the last minute.

No-one is saying the public health orders are unacceptable. Labor is not saying that. We are simply saying: how can you expect a commercial operation to function if they in fact have a major decision that will determine whether they make money or are bankrupt that is entirely in the hands of someone else and if it's uninsurable? This can be fixed. If this is done in the same way as it was done for Hollywood feature films, you can be guaranteed these festival organisers will organise the major events and these expo organisers will organise the expos. Sometimes the events will be cancelled, but, most of the time, it won't cost the government a cent. They're not asking for grants. They're simply asking the government to step in where the insurance world, understandably, will not. This can be fixed. Because of what the government has done with the film industry, we know it can be fixed, and we simply make one appeal: show the respect for Australian entrepreneurs that has been shown to Hollywood entrepreneurs. If you do that, then we'll have a business interruption fund that applies to the live entertainment, expo and major events sector.

I want to refer to an organisation in my electorate by the name of Lighthouse Community Support. One of the most remarkable things for me over the last 12 months has been seeing how many members of the local community came together to support each other in a time of crisis. Lighthouse Community Support is one of the not-for-profit organisations that was packing food hampers for bushfire affected communities. So, at the beginning of last year, there were big empty stores and people were in there packing boxes, loading them onto trucks and driving them down to bushfire affected areas. They went straight from that to organising hampers for people impacted by the pandemic. In my electorate, we have a significant number of people who are not eligible for JobSeeker or JobKeeper, when it was there, because of their visa status. A whole lot of these people were left with, effectively, nothing to live on, and, when the government wasn't feeding these people, organisations like Lighthouse Community Support did. When the government wasn't making sure that people had something to sustain them, the community just stepped in and did it. They showed the best of Australia.

It wasn't only Lighthouse Community Support doing that, but they're the group that I want to pay tribute to today, for the very simple reason that they were recently recognised by the Canterbury-Bankstown council in the annual awards, taking out Community Organisation of the Year. Their work relies on the experience and expertise of their team working in my community in different sectors over the years. Together, Lighthouse run youth mentoring programs and youth leadership programs throughout the area and beyond. They also provide much-needed support for families and students in need and for people who are survivors of domestic violence. I know especially that Lighthouse do this work often without praise. They don't seek praise either. I didn't tell them I was going to make this speech, because they would have asked me not to. They are modest, good people. That's exactly why they were given Community Organisation of the Year. It reminds us that, when we uplift others in our community, we all benefit. I want to thank Lighthouse Community Support for always uplifting others and for making our community a better place.

I want to acknowledge the medical centres and doctors in my part of Sydney for the extraordinary work that they have done during COVID. There are a whole lot of volunteers and other people who have gone to the nth degree. Medical centres have been in a very special role. We had at one point a significant outbreak in Lakemba, and at that moment we put the appeal out for people to put messages on social media in every community language, and it just happened. You started going through the different Facebook pages, and different people were there putting out messages in different community languages, telling people what they had to do for social distancing and telling people what they had to do for testing. Back then it was not as contagious a strain as what we're dealing with now the delta strain of the virus, but certainly the community got on top of it, and what could have been a horrific outbreak was brought back under control.

In acknowledging all of the medical centres, I want to tell the story of one. Disclaimer: it happens to be my own doctor, someone who is known to many people around Parliament House, Dr Jamal Rifi. He asked me to come in to make sure I got my first dose of AstraZeneca from the start, because he wanted to make sure it was promoted to help build community confidence and to make sure that some of the people who have heard the different conspiracy theories were encouraged to take the vaccination. Since March of last year Dr Rifi has transformed not only his clinic but his home. His home is next door to the clinic. He effectively gave up his front yard and put up a marquee. That marquee was originally a testing clinic. Now there is another marquee to the side. There's one as a waiting area for the vaccine. Another is where you sit after you've had the vaccine. Then there's a drive-through section where people are still being tested.

To my knowledge, if he's taken a day off, I don't know when it was, and I was very pleased only a couple of weeks ago to congratulate everybody who works there, from the receptionist to the nurses to the doctors to the administrators. Everybody there has done the most extraordinary work. They always help the patients with their health, but what they have done is keep the entire community safe. It is selfless work. It deserves to be acknowledged in every way. It's the one situation that has been so common over the last 12 months: where the work of our doctors, our medical practitioners and everyone who works with them hasn't been only to protect their patients but has been to protect the whole of Australia.

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