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

We are a great sporting nation, and our natural sporting nature has giving us generations of athletes who have gone far with a natural talent and an unequalled opportunity to play and compete. Bennelong was home to the 'Ermington flash', the great Betty Cuthbert, who started her illustrious career with a humble daily run between school and home. Herb Elliott was said to train by running barefoot. But, as sport has developed, we have come to rely on more than just talent and, also, on more sophisticated tools to play well. Ken Rosewall conquered the world with a pair of Volleys and a wooden racquet, but today Ash Barty travels with a team of support staff and cutting-edge technology at her disposal.

This is not to decry modern athletes' reliance on technology. Technology is helping them reach greater and greater heights and is a perfectly legitimate part of the sport. No, what I'm saying is that playing sport is expensive and getting more expensive all the time, and, if you want to excel on the world stage, it gets a whole lot more costly. Once you've paid for the nutritional consultants, the carbon-fibre whatsits, the fitness trackers and holistic training, you're still nowhere without the venue, the competition, the organisers and the event.

It's a rule of the game that, if you want the best to come to your event, you've got to have the best event, and great events don't come cheap. They have to have the best facilities, the stages, the best catering, seamless organisation and the best prizes, and 'the best' costs big.

The first Australian Open, in 1969, had total prize money of $25,000; the current prize money is $71.5 million. God, I wish I was still playing! Which is why I've said many times in all sincerity that, without the sponsors, the game doesn't get played. Consider this: for every single golf tournament played, everywhere in the world, the day before the competition begins starts with a pro-am, where the sponsors get to play with the great players. This started with the Bing Crosby Clambake that started professional golf. Every player who wins a tournament says a couple of things that are very sincere and some that might not be. They thank the umpires, they thank the ball boys and the ball girls and they thank—with the cheque in their hand—the sponsor.

We've got some big years of events coming to Australia. Next year, the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2022 is coming our way, and in 2023 we're looking forward to sharing the FIFA Women's World Cup with New Zealand. If the weekend's incredible game against Brazil is anything to go by, this is going to be one of the greatest competitions we have seen in this country. But these events won't go ahead without sponsors, and this legislation will protect these events' sponsorship and licensing revenue from being undermined by unauthorised commercial use of event indicia and images. It will follow the same methodology as we used when we provided intellectual property rights protection for the FIFA Women's World Cup and the T20 World Cup. That is consistent with that provided for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games, the 2015 AFC Asian Cup and the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup. As a side note, this legislation removes the protection for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games, which is clearly not useful anymore.

Building on these protections is critical to attracting the high-end sponsorship we need to ensure the viability of competitions. The protections proposed in this bill for these two events are essential to building a lasting legacy and attracting commercial partners that will invest in major sporting events held in Australia into the future. This may sound unimportant, but major events have long been targets of those who seek to create an impression of association with an event in order to achieve a commercial gain without having purchased the rights. This type of activity is known as ambush marketing by association and has the capacity to diminish the value of sponsorship, reduce the incentive for organisations to enter—

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