Renee Coffey (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In Griffith, we are lucky to live in a place that tells stories everywhere you turn. Along the Brisbane River, through the backstreets of West End, at the school crossings at Coorparoo and Camp Hill, at the weekend sports fields and in the cafes that hold a thousand conversations every day, our community is made up of people sharing knowledge, memory, culture and connection. Sometimes it's big and public, sometimes it's quiet and personal, but it is how we make sense of who we are and how we pass that on. And that brings me to copyright.

Deputy Speaker, 'You wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal a handbag,' and, I confidently say, 'you wouldn't steal a television.' For many Australians, that old piracy ad from 2004 is still our most vivid introduction to copyright; it has become somewhat of a cultural joke, but the point behind it still matters.

Australians want to do the right thing. We want rules to be fair. We want to know what is allowed and what is not, and how to respect the people who make the work we all rely on: writers, musicians, educators, film-makers, photographers, publishers, artists and so many more. When the rules are clear and practical, people follow them—not just because they have to, but because we understand that copyright is one of the ways we recognise labour, reward creativity and keep Australian stories being made. That is the balance that this bill is working hard to strike.

The Copyright Amendment Bill 2025 makes two important improvements. First, it creates a sensible way to deal with 'orphan works'—material that is still in copyright but where no-one can identify or locate the owner. Second, it makes sure the laws apply consistently in classrooms, whether teaching is happening face to face, online or in a hybrid model, including when parents or community members are supporting students.

These reforms are not coming out of nowhere. They are the product of the copyright roundtables held across 2023, where stakeholders across the creative sector, education, libraries, archives and institutions came together to name the practical problems and work through sensible solutions. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the member for Isaacs for the diligent work he undertook during his time as Attorney-General and for the expertise and persistence he brought to progressing this reform.

If we step outside the formal language for a moment, the problem this bill is trying to solve is simple. We have valuable material in this country—photographs, recordings, documents, newsletters, teaching resources—that people want to share responsibly for the public good. But they cannot, because the law makes it too risky, even when the owner cannot be found. So the safest option is to do nothing, and that means history sits in boxes. It means culture sits on hard drives. It means material that could be educating students or enriching exhibitions stays locked away from the very communities that it belongs to.

In Griffith, in particular, that matters, because we are home to some of Queensland's most important collecting and archival institutions: the Queensland Museum, the Queensland Maritime Museum, the State Library of Queensland and the Queensland State Archives. In those places there are shelves and strongrooms that hold the texture of our state: maps, letters, photographs, government records, film reels and the kind of everyday documents that later become a record of who we were. And there are people in reading rooms: students, researchers and family historians carefully piecing together stories of country, community and public life.

When the law supports responsible access, staff can bring more of that material into the light, into exhibitions, into classrooms and into online collections, so it is used, learned from and valued rather than kept out of reach. That is what the orphan works scheme does. It creates a clear pathway for a library, an archive, a museum, a community organisation or an educator to use material when the owner cannot be found, provided they have done the right thing first. They must make a responsibly diligent search for the owner, they must keep a record of that search, and they must clearly note when they are relying on the scheme. This is not a free-for-all. It's not about ignoring copyright; it's about recognising that if someone has genuinely tried to do the right thing, they should not face the same legal risk as someone who never cared about the rules in the first place. Importantly, it remains fair to rights holders. If a copyright owner later comes forward, they can seek reasonable payment for that past use, and they can negotiate terms for ongoing use. If they cannot agree, a court can set the terms and an owner can seek to stop future use. In other words, the scheme unlocks public benefit while still respecting the people whose work sits behind these materials.

It also has another important effect. It can help reunite owners with works that have unintentionally become orphaned, which may open up new revenue streams and new audiences for their work. The government amendments also make something clear for education users. In some circumstances, a teacher or a school might choose to rely on the orphan works scheme rather than the education statutory licence for a particular use. That choice is available, but it does come with a responsibility. If they use the orphan works scheme, they have to meet the scheme's conditions, and, if an owner later comes forward, they cannot then fall back on the statutory licence for that same use. That is a fair balance: choice for education users and clear protection for rights holders.

The second main measure is about the reality of modern teaching. When I graduated with my teaching qualifications in 2008, I could not have imagined the changes we are now seeing in education. Many schools now teach in ways that move between classrooms and screens, particularly when students are unwell, when families are juggling work and care or when schools need flexibility. But the laws have not always kept up with that reality. This bill clarifies that the same copyright rules apply in a live class whether it is happening online or in person or is a mix of both.

It also makes clear that parents and carers can be involved and that other people can assist in teaching or supporting students, including members of the community, as long as the instruction is not for profit. That matters because when learning works best it is not only teachers carrying it alone. It's families. It's carers. It's community mentors. It's the people who step up to help a child keep going. And the bill is careful about its limits. This does not change licensing arrangements that support creators and publishers. It is still about live instruction. It does not cover streaming recordings for students to watch later. It does not extend to private tutoring. It does not turn school concerts into something unlicensed. It simply gives schools and educators the certainty to teach effectively in the world that we actually live in.

The bill also includes a small set of technical amendments—practical updates to keep the system running smoothly, including tribunal appointments, modernising notification processes, updating references to archives, and clarifying rules around Crown copyright so that ownership changes do not accidentally distort the length of the protection. These are the kinds of changes that do not make headlines, but they do make the law work better.

This bill is a good example of practical reform. It backs our creative and media sectors by keeping rights clear and enforceable. It supports education by making sure teaching can happen confidently, whether students are in the classroom or learning from home and whether parents or community members are helping. And it supports public access to culture and history by unlocking orphan works in a responsible way so that our communities can see more of their own stories and our institutions can share more of what they hold in trust for all of us, and, as I've said, that's particularly important in my community of Griffith. This is balanced, proportionate reform. It is grounded in consultation and will deliver real benefits in Griffith and right across Australia.

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