John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The type of activity known as ambush marketing, by association, has the capacity to diminish the value of sponsorship, reduce the incentive for organisations to enter into commercial arrangements with events and reduce the overall event revenue, possibly increasing financial impact on the government supporting such events. Memorably, at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, Coca-Cola, which was a major sponsor, had these types of problems with its competitor Pepsi. Pepsi sought to plaster their signs over every advertising billboard on every transport route from the airport to the city and to all of the events. Pepsi might have won the taste test at the time, but they certainly didn't win the fair-play test, which is central to all sport.

While protecting sports' rights to exclusivity, though, we must also make sure that we recognise the other side of the coin—freedom of speech and broader community access. While it's true that the games don't exist without sponsors, if no-one can see the sport or discuss it it dies a similar form of death to the proverbial tree falling in the forest. This legislation therefore makes some important exemptions which will ensure a pragmatic and functional approach to enacting this legislation. For example, generic words and references have been excluded from the list of protected expressions, as have words and expressions that have passed into common usage. A number of exceptions will also exist in relation to the events, allowing for the continued operation of rights and liabilities under the Trade Marks Act 1995, the Designs Act 2003 and the Copyright Act 1968; the provision of information, criticism and review of the events, such as in newspapers, magazines and broadcasts; use of protected indicia and images for the reasonable needs of sporting bodies in relation to fundraising and promotion; and communities and businesses to engage in city dressing and festival promotions supporting the events in non-commercial ways. These new event protections will cease to have effect approximately one year after the completion of the events—31 December 2024 for the FIFA Women's World Cup and 13 November 2023 for the T20 World Cup.

I'd like to conclude by briefly talking about these two events and, indeed, other sporting events we host in this country. The FIFA Women's World Cup and the T20 World Cup present a great opportunity to showcase Australia from a tourism, trade and event delivery perspective. In this respect, they mirror what is an already very internationally heavy sporting calendar. In normal years, international visitors flock to Melbourne for the Australian Open tennis event, and pretty soon the Barmy Army would start rolling in for the upcoming Ashes tour. These summer events will repeat over the coming years and will be capped off in 2032 with the biggest international sporting event of them all, the Olympic Games. On each of these occasions, hundreds of thousands of tourists will come into our cities for these events and then return soon after they are over, with memories of great sporting events at some of the most beautiful cities on the planet. But few of them will stay on. This is an opportunity missed. That only a fraction of the international visitors for the Australian Open are convinced to spend an extra week in Australia is a missed opportunity. These visitors are low-hanging fruit. We don't need to convince the people to come across the oceans to come here; they're already here. We just need to sell them that week in the wine country, in the outback, at the Barrier Reef or at any one of thousands of other unique tourism offerings that Australia can boast. We need to harvest these people. We should be throwing serious money at selling more Australian experiences to people who have already committed to the journey. That's where our tourism dollar can go further and support the regional businesses who need it, especially now. We need to leverage these great events and these great venues and stages that we have.

Furthermore, we should build on this sporting clusters idea when our teams go overseas for bilateral competitions. They are our ambassadors, selling Australia to the world, and we should use the opportunity to sell tourism and other opportunities at the same time. Yes, our cricket teams should be seeking to win matches, but they should also be seeking to sell tickets for the return test.

We've done the hard part: we've got the world cups, the opens, the Ashes and the Olympics. We need to make more of them. We need to use our events and our great stadiums—such as the Royal Randwick Racecourse, Flemington, Melbourne Park and the MCG—as launchpads for sports tourism in Australia.

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