Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The classification of films, TV shows, books, video games and other digital content provides important information for Australians, and particularly parents. I was listening to the member for Macquarie's contribution just now, reflecting on the way that my engagement with the classification scheme has changed from my time as a child to, now, my time as a parent. As a child, I railed against the restrictions that my parents imposed on me, in not allowing me to consume the content that I wanted to; but as a parent I look on the scheme somewhat differently, as an important source of information and an important guardrail to help us allow our children to develop at a developmentally appropriate pace. Indeed, Australian families rely on classifications to help them make informed choices about what they and those they care about watch, read and play.

Unfortunately, our classification scheme is no longer fit for purpose. The way that content is delivered to Australians has changed enormously in recent years. The creative industries are inherently technologically driven, and we've seen a fair bit of technology change since the National Classification Scheme was introduced. There have been vast changes to how Australians consume content, and the Classification Scheme hasn't kept up. The National Classification Scheme really has remained largely unchanged since its introduction in 1995. It hasn't kept pace with the way that Australians access media content, particularly the rapid growth of online media content and online content distribution platforms.

Think about what the media landscape looked like in 1995—the first year that I started high school—a great year for content. Die Hard with a Vengeance was the highest-grossing film worldwide—a great film. Val Kilmer was playing Batman in Batman Foreverprobably a less good film. ER was dominating the TV ratings. And, very importantly for me at the time, the PlayStation first launched in the United States and Europe. In 1995 we were a long way off from smartphones, streaming services and online delivery of gaming content—all many of the ways that Australians consume content today. A classification scheme based on rules from the 1990s and the world that we lived in in the 1990s—while I'm told it's becoming cool again in a retro way, which is kind of depressing for how old I feel in this place—isn't fit for purpose. It needs to be updated so that Australians can have confidence in it as a trusted source of information.

Several reviews, including the Australian Law Reform Commission's 2012 report and the 2020 Review of Australian classification regulation, have found that the National Classification Scheme is no longer fit for purpose. We've spent too much time without acting on this. The 2012 ALRC review was a review that I participated in before I came into this place, and even at that time it was obvious that we needed to get moving on reform. These reviews, as well as calls from industry, have highlighted that the reform of the scheme is long overdue, and I congratulate the minister at the desk, Minister Rowland, for grabbing the bull by the horns.

The Albanese Labor government is committed to reforming the scheme to ensure that it meets the needs of modern Australia and modern consumers of content in a modern technological environment. We're doing so in a sensible, methodical, staged way. A staged approach allows us to make urgent and immediate improvements to the scheme while the government undertakes consultation. This will enable the government to work with key stakeholders to clarify the purpose and scope of the scheme, to establish fit-for-purpose regulatory and governance arrangements, and to ensure that classification criteria is aligned with and responsive to evolving community standards and expectations. There's no point in regulating in this space in a way that creates dead letter law, that's not reflective of practice in the sector, that's not implementable and that doesn't reflect modern community standards. Consultation is really important as part of these reforms.

This will create a contemporary classification framework that will serve all Australians into the future. The Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment (Industry Self-Classification and Other Measures) Bill 2023 will deliver on key elements of the government's first stage of classification reforms. Specifically, it will expand options for industry to self-classify content, to make it easier for content providers, particularly online content providers, to comply with classification regulations and to reduce classification time frames and costs for business. It provides for appropriate safeguards and oversight by expanding the Classification Board's powers to quality-assure and revoke, where necessary, self-classification decisions. It expands exemptions for classification for low-risk cultural content, including films in languages other than English being distributed through public libraries, as well as content that is displayed by approved cultural institutions as part of routine exhibitions and events. Finally, it improves the efficiency of the classification system by removing the requirement to reclassify material that has already been classified under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992.

It's worth pausing to consider how radically different the classification task is today from how it was in 1995. Just the sheer volume of content available in the Australian jurisdiction means that the old way of classification just isn't viable in the new world. The mode-shifting of content, as well—not something that was really anticipated in the nineties—is the norm now. People consume the same content across different platforms and different mediums. It has the same impact on kids, though, or on other consumers. We need a new way that's not just the top-down, narrow pipe of government classifying, and that's what this scheme delivers.

The Albanese Labor government isn't only committed to reforming the National Classification Scheme. We recognise the evolving creative industries and content environment, and we're committed to supporting Australia's creative industries. The Labor Party has a long, proud history of supporting the arts and Australian content makers. It's not just a calling. It's not just a vocation. It's not just an outlet for artistic expression. It's a job. It's an industry. It's an economic engine for our nation. We recognise that. This is not only because Australians are talented, emotive, evocative storytellers who can achieve international success when given the right support but also because it makes economic sense. It's enlightened self-interest.

Our arts, entertainment and cultural sector is a $17 billion industry that employs an estimated 400,000 Australians. Unfortunately, it's also a sector that was left adrift after a lost decade of policy and funding neglect under the former government. That's why we announced a new national cultural policy, called Revive, backed by a $286 million funding commitment over four years. This has been supported by the establishment of Creative Australia, the Australian government's new principal arts investment and advisory body backing the creative potential and economic power of Australian artists and creators.

I want to give a brief shout-out at this point to one specific sector of Australia's content creators and our artistic industries, and that's the Australian digital games industry. I was very pleased in the last parliament to be the co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Video Games. It created some new opportunities for engagement in this place, including running the first Twitch stream from Parliament House with my friend the now Minister for Home Affairs, playing an outstanding Australian game, Moving Out, while also having a conversation with people who joined in to watch the stream and talk about the potential of the Australian gaming sector.

You only have to look at the products that Australian video game developers have produced over recent years to see the potential here. We really punch above our weight, whether that's the simple mobile game and video game Florence, which won a swathe of indie awards a few back, about a young woman moving to Melbourne—the greatest city in the world—and falling in love. It's a great creative enterprise expressed through video gaming. Another great Melbourne video gaming product is Untitled Goose Game, the story of a goose that goes wild in a village—not an obvious concept for a video game but a worldwide blockbuster and award winner, the product of four guys in Melbourne coming together to produce something that is not just a wonderful artistic product but a real economic engine. Or there's Moving Out, the game I discussed earlier that the Minister for Home Affairs and I streamed from Parliament House, a video game where you work collaboratively with a partner to move furniture out of a home into a removal van. It sounds prosaic—madcap fun. It's harder than it looks, too; I'll give you that tip. My personal favourite in recent years is The Cult of the Lamb, a game where you establish a blood cult, as a lamb, and have to acquire followers for your cult. It's not to everyone's taste, but it's a really successful game on the international market.

Then there are the bigger studios in Australia, like Big Ant Studios, who have produced the Australian Open tennis game series in recent years as well as the AFL game. I was really pleased to be able to visit Big Ant Studios in the last term of parliament, along with the member for Macnamara, in his own electorate, where we were digitised and put into the game in all our 3D glory. I know that the member for Wills will appreciate this: the member for Macnamara and I, in our digital form, played in a doubles game against Rafael Nadal. The digital power of Big Ant Studios enabled us to compete with Rafael Nadal. I mean, that requires some seriously impressive computer engineering capability!

The video games industry in Australia is the largest creative industry in the world, worth approximately $250 billion. And the video games industry is a potential billion-dollar industry for Australia—a high-skilled and high-wage industry, involving skills that are transferable to a range of other critical industries, like, significantly, cybersecurity and AI development. But we haven't been capitalising on this potential. In Australia, game development studios employed only around 100 full-time workers in 2021 and generated $226.5 million.

On this side of the House we know we need to support and grow the video game industry as an ecosystem. That's why the Albanese Labor government established the Digital Games Tax Offset. The offset creates a 30 per cent tax offset for eligible games developers that spend a minimum of $500,000 on qualifying Australian development expenditure, effective from 1 July 2022. And the Digital Games Tax Offset will help the growth of the Australian video games industry. And I thank the members of parliament from the other side of the House who are in Parliamentary Friends of Video Games for their advocacy on this issue. Hopefully this tax offset will mean that more Australian classics like Untitled Goose Game and The Cult of the Lamb will be showcased to the world.

Labor has been supportive of our video game industry for a long time. Indeed, in 2012 we established the Australian Interactive Games Fund, with $20 million in funding to support our domestic video games industry. But while we had a vision for the future of the industry 10 years ago—we saw the opportunity for what investment in the domestic industry could bring—I regret to inform the House that in 2014 it took the new coalition government only six months to tear that up. It's indicative of the decade of lost time that we had under those opposite. It left a massive hole in government support for the industry and really left us trailing our peer nations—competitor countries like Canada, which has strongly backed its domestic video game production industry for quite some time. So, we're catching up on that now. We're investing in it.

The bill before the House really recognises that video games, online streaming platforms—the myriad ways that we now enjoy digital content—have changed radically since the establishment of the National Classification Scheme in the 1990s, and we need our classification scheme to respond to this new world. That's what this bill is doing: creating the information parents need in order to guide their decisions on what content their kids consume as well as what content any Australians consume, but doing it in a way that also recognises the incredible economic opportunities our creative industries represent. I commend the bill to the House.

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