Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I will start with the concept that is relevant to all the amendments, so will speak generally. People will be aware of the extent of the legal work and the challenges of making sure we keep this piece of legislation within trade law. Some of the pushback and back-and-forth has found its way into the media but members of the House would certainly be aware of that. For that reason and because of the level of legal work that has gone into the legislation, the government will not have an appetite to accept amendments, as a general rule, as we work our way through this. That said, I will still speak to give a position on the individual amendments as they are moved.

First of all, I respect the engagement that the member for Wentworth has had with the screen industry. She has a large number of people engaged in the screen industry in her electorate of Wentworth. She has publicly raised and asked about this issue in parliament and privately has sought regular briefings from me through her entire time here, wanting to make sure that not only did we get to an obligation for the streaming services but that it was as unambiguous as possible.

The effect of the first amendment would effectively take us from an obligation of 10 per cent to 13 or 14 per cent. That is the impact it would have. There are particular reasons under trade law as to why we are introducing legislation at the 10 per cent figure, so we would not be able to support an amendment that departed from that. In the comments of the member for Wentworth, there was a reference to how the producer offset was to be calculated against other obligations. Many of the free-to-air obligations, for example, relate to time not expenditure; therefore, it is irrelevant to those. The only expenditure obligation in the same way would be the NETI obligation that applies to Foxtel. In that situation there is not a discount in the form that this amendment would seek, so keeping it as is would be consistent with how the only other expenditure based obligation we have operates.

In earlier consultation I had been seeking sub quotas. We have pulled right back from sub quotas, based on the legal position we have been working ourselves through in trade law. I would not want there to be a reporting obligation that in any way confused that should we end up in a situation where this is challenged, so the government will not be in a position to support any of the amendments.

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