Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Urban Infrastructure and Cities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and an addendum to the explanatory memorandum to the bill and I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

There are significant opportunities in the digital environment for improving the way we provide educational services, provide services to people with a disability and promote cultural and historical experiences in Australia. Many of these opportunities, however, may put Australia's educational and cultural institutions and organisations assisting people with a disability at a high risk of copyright infringement. There is a balance to be struck between encouraging the development of new and innovative services for the benefit of all Australians and ensuring that Australian creators can retain control and derive value from their copyright-protected material. Ensuring respect for the creative efforts and economic rights of creators is an ongoing challenge for all participants in the digital environment. Extension of the safe harbour scheme to service providers in these sectors will provide greater certainty to educational and cultural institutions and to those organisations assisting people with a disability about their responsibilities in engaging in the online space.

The current safe harbour scheme in the Copyright Act 1968 was introduced following the commencement of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement in 2005. The scheme in the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement was intended to provide an alternative to court proceedings for copyright owners where their infringing material is hosted, cached or linked to by a service provider or where a provider's network services are used to infringe copyright. It sets out conditions with which a service provider must comply, including, in some situations, taking down infringing material or removing links to infringing material when they have been notified of a suspected infringement by a copyright owner. When the scheme was originally implemented in Australia, it was restricted only to carriage service providers—or providers of telecommunications services (such as internet service providers) as they are more commonly known. This cautious approach was taken because the internet was still in its infancy.

This bill, through the extension of the existing safe harbour scheme, will ensure that a greater range of service providers can work with copyright owners to effectively protect copyright material without recourse to litigation. The extended scheme enabled by this bill will apply the safe harbour provision to educational institutions such as universities and schools as well as libraries, archives, museums and organisations assisting people with a disability. Where these additional service providers comply with the requirements of the safe harbour scheme, including the operation of a 'notice and take down system', their liability for monetary remedies will be limited.

The education, cultural and disability sectors generally take a very risk-averse approach to protecting and managing the copyright of others. Many of the institutions and organisations who, under this bill, will be covered by the safe harbour scheme already comply with the requirements of the scheme and actively work with copyright owners to remove or disable access to infringing material residing on their systems or networks or to take action against repeat infringers. In doing so, they dedicate a significant amount of resources on their processors. Yet they still remain potentially liable for the infringement of their users, which is beyond their active control.

This bill will reduce the potential exposure of these sectors to legal liability for authorising copyright infringement when third parties use their networks or services in a way that breaches copyright. This amendment will provide certainty to a group of institutions and organisations which provide services that are in the public interest and will support them in being more innovative in the online environment. This will therefore encourage these institutions and organisations to create and deliver enhanced online services for all Australians.

Copyright owners will benefit from the extended scheme as it will provide them with a consistent mechanism for working with those organisations covered by the bill to address copyright infringement on a broader scale rather than having to pursue each and every individual who infringes copyright online.

Last year, the government introduced and passed the Copyright Amendment (Disability Access and Other Measures) Act 2017 which was the result of a collaborative effort between rights holders, the education and cultural sector and the disability sector. The passage of the disability access act was an important step in simplifying and modernising the Copyright Act 1968 in response to specific challenges and concerns identified by rights holders and those sectors of the community. This bill now builds upon the effective working relationship that already exists between these sectors and copyright owners as a result of the disability access act.

Users of these institutions' and organisations' services will also have additional protection under the safe harbour scheme. The changes will give users a clear process for ensuring that, where their material is removed from the institutions' or organisations' systems or networks, in line with a notice under the safe harbour scheme, it can be reinstated when the user can demonstrate that the material is not infringing. This will ensure, for example, that students and researchers can protect their legitimate use of copyright material in online forums.

The government has made the decision to make this incremental expansion of the safe harbour scheme so that it can continue to consult on how best to reform the scheme to apply to other online service providers in the future. In Australia, the expansion of the safe harbour provisions has been reviewed in six separate government reviews over a period of more than 10 years. Each of these reviews called for submissions from the public. The Productivity Commission's 2016 review of Australia's intellectual property arrangements was the most recent of these reviews and it recommended that the scheme be extended to all online service providers.

The government is, however, aware that a blanket extension of safe harbour remains a highly contested reform. This is why we chose to undertake further consultation last year. The consultation demonstrated the full spectrum of views from complete support to strident opposition. Both sides are worthy of a full examination. The government has appreciated the open and frank dialogue that we have had with representatives from both sides.

On the one hand, we have heard that extending safe harbour would encourage piracy, contribute to the gap in revenue between subscription and ad based content services and remove the ability for rights holders to seek licenced revenue from online services. Of particular concern have been scenarios in which service providers derive profit from the infringing activities of their users. There are also strong concerns that the current conditions in the safe harbour scheme are no longer effective in addressing infringement and that they need to be reconsidered to ensure they promote a collaborative and supportive online environment.

On the other hand we hear that Australia has legal uncertainty about the extent to which service providers can be liable for the actions of their users, which has a chilling effect on innovation. Service providers, who in many cases perform the same role as a carriage service provider, have pointed out that they are the ones that have no protection and that this makes Australia uncompetitive compared with other countries who have a safe harbour scheme. Internet users and service providers alike have argued that safe harbour provides a simple non-court based option to address infringement on the internet which should be a good thing for the creative sector.

The worst outcome would be for the government to inadvertently impact on rights holders' ability to realise returns on their creative and financial investments. Australia has thriving creative industries whose work contributes enormously to our economy and our cultural life. The government is trying to achieve an environment that encourages innovation, but does not want to do that at the expense of a vibrant cultural and arts sector and the thousands of Australians it employs. At the same time the government recognises that there are many institutions and organisations that operate in the public interest of all Australians and there are actors on the internet who are trying to build a robust and innovative Australian digital economy.

So far, opposing parties have been unable to meet in the middle of this protracted debate. So this bill starts the process of safe harbour reform by responding to where there is broad consensus and extending the scheme to a group of institutions and organisations that all agree are responsible players in the copyright space.

The current Australian safe harbour scheme, which this bill will extend, is governed by procedural provisions in the Copyright Regulations 1969. These regulations provide the additional details about exactly how the safe harbour scheme works including: how industry codes must be developed, how notifications and notices should be issued and received, and the procedures for notice and takedown of infringing material. As part of the Department of Communications and the Arts review of the sunsetting Copyright Regulations 1969, last year stakeholders had an opportunity to indicate how these provisions might be updated. The government remade these regulations in largely the same form as their sunsetting version, save for some further enhancements to give effect to provisions contained in the Copyright Amendment (Disability Access and Other Measures) Act 2017. However, the passage of this bill will require some further updates to the regulations.

Therefore, the government recently released an exposure draft of amending regulations to facilitate the extension of the safe harbour scheme for consultation prior to passage of this bill. The government will focus on ensuring that the mechanics of Australia's safe harbour scheme, contained within the regulations, operate effectively in Australia's digital environment for copyright owners and the broader range of service providers defined in this bill.

The government will continue to work with stakeholders seeking to find a way to further extend the safe harbour scheme in a way that allows Australian businesses to harness the significant opportunities of the growing digital economy while ensuring respect for the creative efforts and economic rights of creators. The government is confident that through this staged approach it can find a way to provide a practical and responsive safe harbour framework that operates effectively in the Australian environment.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor supports the Copyright Amendment (Service Providers) Bill 2017, the purpose of which is to expand the operation of the legal safe harbour scheme set out in the Copyright Act 1968 to a broader range of service providers. Labor has long advocated for the change that is brought about by this bill, and we have worked with the government to bring this bill forward. The existing safe harbour scheme established by the Copyright Act protects carriage service providers—in particular, internet service providers such as Telstra and Optus—from the civil liability that they would otherwise be exposed to for hosting or communicating material that infringes copyright. To be able to rely on this legislated safe harbour created by the Copyright Act, the carriage service provider needs to demonstrate that they operate a scheme for removing copyright-infringing material if they are notified of such material by a rights holder. Such processes are, of course, popularly known as takedown processes.

This legislation will extend the legislated safe harbour scheme beyond carriage service providers to include, first, educational institutions through their administering bodies, including universities, schools, technical colleges, training bodies and preschools. The bill also extends the safe harbour scheme to libraries that either make their collection available to the public or are parliamentary libraries through their administering bodies; to archives through their administering bodies, including the National Archive of Australia and specified state archives, galleries and museums; to key cultural institutions through their administering bodies, including specific archives and libraries that are not open to the public; and, finally, to organisations assisting persons with a disability. The extension of the safe harbour scheme pursuant to this bill is generally supported by rights holders and their peak groups because it provides a social good without undermining the commercial interests of content creators or their capacity to negotiate effectively with commercial enterprises for the distribution of their copyright materials.

Labor has consulted widely on this bill, as indeed has the government. We support the bill because it will provide greater legal protections for our schools, for our universities and for our libraries and cultural institutions to operate efficiently in the digital age. At the same time, this bill balances the interests of rights holders with those of the important educational and cultural institutions that will benefit from the extended protections provided under the expanded safe harbour scheme. This is in part because the entities protected by the expanded safe harbour scheme established by this bill do not benefit financially from the use of content on their networks, and so these reforms cannot be said in any way to distort the commercial market. Labor supports this bill as making balanced and reasonable reform to copyright law and we will continue consultations with stakeholders on whether further changes to the legislated safe harbour scheme under the Copyright Act may be desirable.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Schools) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to join the shadow Attorney-General, the member for Isaacs, in making a brief contribution in support of the Copyright Amendment (Service Providers) Bill 2017. As the shadow Attorney-General has said, the provisions which are constituted in this bill are by and large matters for which the Australian Labor Party has long advocated, and we welcome their introduction while recognising that there is, of course, some way to go in order to fill some of the wider policy challenges posed in the area of copyright law. This is a dynamic area of the economy, yet it would appear that this is an area where our lawmaking processes have not kept pace with needs.

Very briefly, in my own portfolio responsibilities for schools and universities, these are areas where the issue of the expansion of safe harbours is particularly important. In that regard, I note the shadow Attorney-General's comments about the social good that really lies at the heart of getting this balance right between rights holders and societal interests. On the basis of that and in recognition of very wide consultation undertaken by the opposition, acknowledging also the work of the government, I commend the bill to the House.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Preventing Family Violence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Copyright Amendment (Service Providers) Bill 2017 is a very important bill, because it is a fact that for many, many years there has been a lot of contest in relation to copyright law in Australia and that will remain the case after this bill is passed. Nonetheless, this bill goes some way to advancing the cause of those who would like to see rights holders protected and also copyright laws that are fit for purpose in the 21st century. We are fortunate in this country to have a great start-up ecosystem. It's something that I have certainly taken a very strong interest in for the entire time that I've been here in the parliament. In fact, the now Speaker, Tony Smith, and I established this parliament's bipartisan Parliamentary Friends of Innovation and Enterprise group back in 2014, and I remain the co-convener of that important group.

We have, in the course of the work that we have done in that bipartisan friends group, really met with a lot of people who are in that ecosystem, whether that's individual start-ups, StartupAus, universities, venture capitalists, angel investors and a whole range of people in that ecosystem. They are incubators and accelerators. They are run for profit, not for profit, by universities or by community. A number of those participants in the start-up ecosystem in this country have a very strong interest in making sure that—in innovating and in creating new products and services for people to use, whether it's for domestic use or for export—they do not inadvertently run afoul of Australia's copyright laws. You can imagine that there are lots of different ideas and different applications involving the use of material that may be copyrighted. I say 'may be' because it's not even always clear what is copyrighted.

That parliamentary friends group has heard from a number of people in respect of their concerns about Australia's copyright laws and how dated some people consider them to be. We've certainly had some very good bipartisan and, I have to say, robust discussions about a related issue. That issue is the fair use exemption that is sought by some stakeholders. There are people who are very strongly for the creation of such an exemption; there are people who are very strongly against it. That is because they worry about what that will mean for the erosion of their rights to the intellectual property that they have created and owned. Everyone in this place would agree that it is important to have very strong intellectual property rights. It has never been as important as it is now to have strong intellectual property rights.

The enforcement and creation of rights incentivises innovation and incentivises economic activity. If you know that you won't be able to actually enforce your rights, then you lose a fair bit of the incentive to create the IP in the first place. It is important that we have a very strong intellectual property regime. It is also equally important, in making sure that that regime exists, that we consider the interests of both producers and consumers when it comes to the use of products and services that are created. Labor has traditionally been the party that seeks to protect the interests of consumers. Consumers often have less power in a market than producers do. We have some landmark consumer protection legislation against our name. There was the Whitlam government's Trade Practices Act 1974. During the Rudd-Gillard years, there was the Consumer and Competition Act 2010. We're interested in what can be done to redress some of the power differentials between consumers and producers.

In copyright, you have to conceptualise it as an issue of consumers and producers. The market for complicated goods, for new goods and for new services is, after all, just a market. Even though the goods and services may feel unfamiliar to us and the new technologies are unfamiliar to us, it's still a market. In that market, you will still have power imbalances. When we talk about copyright law, it sounds like it might be something quite dull, but it's actually fascinating. That's because copyright law is what seeks to strike the legal balance between the competing interests and rights of the people who produce content and the people who consume content. You might consume it as an end user, as a retail consumer, or you might consume content from a production perspective or value-chain perspective. Content might be an input into a new product or service that you create through the addition of value.

For people in that latter class, it's important that we think about how copyright laws work so that they're not, as I said, inadvertently caught up in copyright laws but also so that, more broadly, we can have the protection of rights without stifling innovation, creativity and economic activity. It's an interesting question, because it's really an intermediate-good content when looked at from that perspective. It's not a final-use good. So how do you ensure that, when there is a process of value creation or value addition, there are not unreasonable constraints or restraints on that economic activity, because that's not in anyone's interests?

I always take a strong interest in copyright law from an innovation perspective. Of course, I'm also an end user of content. I've been known to listen to music. I've been known to read books occasionally, although not as often as I might like, as I'm sure many of us here would say. I see the member for Swan smiling at that proposition. He's a bit sceptical that I read books! But, as retail end users of content, we want to make sure that there's not regulation that causes difficulty in gaining access or puts in place constraints or restraints that are unreasonable. But, at the same time, I think most users in Australia want to pay their fair share for the use of copyrighted material. It's interesting that people are starting to learn about the importance of making a fair payment for content. People whose favourite TV show got cancelled because everyone was downloading it illegally instead of paying to watch it learned about the value of paying your fair share to access copyrighted material. So that is what we must consider when we come to any legislation that might seek to amend the copyright laws of this country.

I think this bill really does strike at the heart of the second of the two main issues that continuously come up in our discussions in our enterprise and innovation group, and that's safe harbour. Should there be a safe harbour protection for people who use copyrighted materials, maybe inadvertently, without the correct permissions or arrangements in place? Or should there be a safe harbour for people who use materials of which they just don't know the provenance? They may be using a material for which they don't know who the author, producer or creator is? How do you reconcile all these competing interests? This particular bill that we're dealing with here would extend the operation of the safe harbour scheme that's set out in the existing legislation to a broader range of service providers. It's a fairly non-controversial foray into safe harbour reform. There certainly would be controversy if the bill were looking at a much broader version of 'safe harbour' than this bill is, but this bill, given its particular terms, seems to have broad support across the stakeholder groups. Of course, Labor consults stakeholder groups, as I'm sure the government does as well.

This bill is generally supported by producers and rights holders and their peak bodies because it provides a social good without undermining their commercial interests. Also, it doesn't undermine their capacity to negotiate effectively with commercial enterprises for the distribution of their copyrighted materials. That's good and important to them because one of the fears that you hear a lot about when discussing safe harbour or fair use in the context of innovation is small producers being without much power vis-a-vis massive multinational corporations that might want to use their content to help develop machine learning or new applications that haven't been previously thought of. You as a producer might feel pretty powerful compared to an end user or retail consumer, but do you feel powerful up against a multinational technology firm? Perhaps not. They don't want to lose their bargaining power either. They don't want to lose their ability to negotiate, so it is important that we consider that in any copyright reform. This bill certainly does consider that. I think people are happy with it because they don't perceive it as eroding their power and their ability to get a fair day's pay for the work that they've put into creating the content that they've created.

I think this bill should be supported because it strikes those balances and incorporates those sets of interests, and it should also be supported as a step along the path of really looking at what needs to be done to modernise our copyright laws in this country. As I said, this one's fairly non-controversial because it's actually about taking the rights of rights holders and the interests of educational and cultural institutions and then providing the extended benefits under the safe harbour scheme to try to better balance those two sets of interests. I say it's fairly non-controversial because the entities that will benefit from this particular legislation don't actually benefit financially from the use of the copyright material. It's a different situation to a big tech firm using it to create a commercial product, a commodity. That's not the case with this bill, so this one particularly can be fairly non-controversial.

The founding principle for this bill is that passive carriers with no control over the material carried on internet services shouldn't be liable for copyright infringement, provided they take steps to remove infringing content when they're notified of its use. The scheme is that if you put something up, you don't know that it's a copyright infringement, the rights holder gets in touch and you take it down then there is no liability—that's the idea—whereas, if you've been obstinate and refuse to take down someone else's material, obviously that would be a very different proposition.

This bill will help schools, universities, libraries and cultural institutions to operate efficiently without having to have the constant worry hanging over them about the inadvertent breach of copyright legislation. It's very important that we acknowledge that there are a lot of burdens carried by our educational and cultural institutions when it comes to the use of material. I've certainly had school and university librarians come and see me about these exact issues, because a school might pay a lot of public moneys towards the copyright agencies to pay fees for copyright for works that you might not even know the author of. In one case, those fees were going into a fighting fund against copyright law reform, an issue that gave a lot of people some cause for concern. It certainly is an issue that's been discussed in the halls of this building a little bit as well. I think it's worth noting that those school and university librarians aren't there advocating out of personal interest; they're advocating because they want to see an end to the waste of public money that's spent on trying to (1) manage the copyright regime and (2) pay fees to people when we don't even know who they are and can't track them down. So I think it's really a great step forward for those educational institutions, and the same goes for cultural institutions as well.

But I want to make the point that we can't just stop with this bill. I know the other parts are much harder, I know that it's not an easy thing to reconcile and balance the competing commercial interests of producers, retail consumers and value adders, people for whom the product is seen as an intermediate good rather than a final good. I think we can articulate, though, what we want the principles to be: (1) we want thriving domestic production of artistic, cultural and creative works in which there is copyright; (2) we don't want unnecessary burdens on schools and cultural institutions, something that this bill deals with; and (3) we also don't want unnecessary impediments on firms and enterprises that are seeking to create new goods.

The fact is that information is a resource. As well as something that is an end in itself, it's also a resource. We have to find ways to really look at what firms like Redbubble and other Australian firms that are content users are doing and say: 'Do we want to have a country where we have innovation, where enterprising people can generate economic activity and where we can have the interests of producers taken strongly into account and the bargaining power of producers not eroded? Are there ways to reconcile those principles?'

I don't claim to have the answers to all these questions, of course. These are complicated questions. I certainly don't have a dog in the fight as to whether we should look after producers more, or tech firms more, or consumers more. But I do think all of those interests need to be taken into account, because we do have a very big opportunity before us with our innovation ecosystem. We do have the skills. We are an advanced economy, we have great skills and we have great people. We're a wealthy nation, comparatively, in world terms. We have this opportunity to really take our innovation ecosystem and use it.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Copyright Amendment (Service Providers) Bill 2017 and I thank the member for Griffith, my next-door neighbour, for her great contribution. I know that the member for Griffith is a wonderful musician and an author, so I think she does have some skin in the game or a dog in the fight when it comes to looking after the rights of people who create. I thank the member for Griffith for her creation.

I say up-front that, from the outset, Labor has supported this bill. It is a balanced measure that will benefit educational and cultural institutions without compromising the commercial creative arts market or the public interest, but not at the expense of the creator's living. As I'm sure the member for Wakefield would agree, artists must eat. We must look after our artists and those who create, but also make sure that we look after educational and cultural institutions.

Mr Champion interjecting—

I'll take that interjection from the member for Wakefield, who is making the point that I'm glad I have a day job rather than relying on my endeavours as an artist! I'll come back to that later, time permitting. This bill extends the scope of the safe-harbour provisions already contained in the Copyright Act. The current provisions were designed to protect carriage service providers from copyright infringements by their subscribers. They limit the remedies available against those providers, where the carriage provider does not control, initiate or direct the primary infringement. Certain circumstances must be present for the carriage service to have the benefit of these provisions, including that the provider must implement reasonable policies that provide for terminating the accounts of repeat infringers—they can't turn away from the poor behaviour. Also, they must comply with industry codes. We have a focus on self-regulation here, so they must do the right thing. Also, they must expeditiously remove infringing material and they must not receive a financial benefit that is directly attributable to the infringing activity. These are commonsense approaches, as I'm sure you would agree, Deputy Speaker Hastie. The remedies are limited and include orders to disable access to infringing copyright material. Remedies do not extend to damages or an account of profits.

These are important safeguards for carrier services such as Telstra and Optus, who provide internet services to their customers—or, maybe, in turning my mind to Optus I should say that they try to provide internet services to their customers. I'm just kidding, Optus, and I'm sure you'll reply to the tweeted question I asked of you the other night about the World Cup game where the commentary was two seconds ahead of the vision, which is quite disconcerting when watching a game of football. Nevertheless, I'm sure Optus will be looking to improve what they're providing to the Australian public.

This bill extends these provisions to include other institutions, such as educational institutions, including universities, schools, technical colleges, training bodies and preschools, and to libraries that make their collections available to the public or are parliamentary libraries. I'll just give a big shout-out to the Parliamentary Library here. I'm sure everyone in opposition would agree that the library in this building is the opposition's best friend—maybe a backbencher's best friend, as well. They do their job impartially. They do great research and provide a great service to the democratic institution that is this building.

We also extend these provisions to archives, including the National Archives of Australia—and I mentioned the Queensland archives, which are located at Runcorn in my electorate of Moreton. The provisions are extended to key cultural institutions, including specific archives and libraries that are not open to the public, and to organisations assisting persons with a disability.

Labor supports this bill because it embodies the principle that passive carriers with no control over the material carried on internet services should not be liable for copyright infringement provided they take reasonable steps to remove infringing content when notified of its use. It is important that our schools and universities who operate in the digital age are protected from unnecessary financial legal burdens if they are operating in a responsible manner. All of the institutions that will benefit from the extension of the safe harbour scheme in this bill do not receive financial gain from the use of content on their networks, which is a good framing mechanism for how we approach this balancing of the public interest with the creators' rights.

In his second reading speech the Minister for Communications foreshadowed further broader reforms to the safe harbour scheme. The Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee reviewed this bill. Their report concluded that the government's incremental approach to safe harbour reform was appropriate. The committee supported the approach that educational and cultural institutions and organisations assisting people with a disability will be afforded protection immediately. I particularly mention those organisations assisting people with a disability. I'd like to say hello to Braille House in my electorate of Moreton, who provide a great service throughout Queensland and, on occasion, throughout Australia. They are taking an artist's work and providing it to people that would not normally be able to access it. Hello to all those at Braille House who were so welcoming when I visited during May.

The committee also supported continued consultation with stakeholders. I note that the Greens political party tabled a dissenting report to that committee inquiry. I think some of their inner-city base would have a couple of artists, musicians or creators. The Greens political party, who often like to think of themselves as champions of the Australian arts, bizarrely put in a dissenting report to the committee, ignoring the concerns of artists, musicians and creators. In the face of the vast majority of rights holders and their umbrella organisations in Australia, the Greens political party backed the position of Google, a multinational giant, to extend the safe harbour scheme in line with the current United States scheme, which has been highly criticised and is currently undergoing a review by United States lawmakers. Radical changes to copyright laws, as advocated by the Greens political party and Google, would have the capacity to undermine the ability of Australian artists, musicians, authors and other rights holders to negotiate viable commercial arrangements for the distribution of their work.

As someone who makes a very meagre living from the books I write, I declare a slight conflict of interest. I hear snickering from the member for Brand behind me. I do have three books published by Boolarong Press: The Twelfth Fish, The Big Fig and The Solid Rock. I'm working on a new book at the moment.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is that a comment for cash? You've said that four times.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm sure the member for Swan has read or bought these books. They're available at the bookstore here. I'm happy to sign them for his next fundraiser—Lord knows he'll need one! They're very valuable.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They might've gone up in value.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm not sure if they've gone up in value, but they're certainly rare.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would direct the member back to the point of the bill.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; that's very kind of you. As I said, I declare that conflict of interest. It is hard for authors and artists to make a living in Australia. With a smaller population of 24½ million it's hard, even for the great musicians we know and listen to every day, to make a viable income. Nevertheless, let's go back to this: there are a range of stakeholder views about these complex issues. Labor believes extreme caution should attend any entertainment of a further extension to the safe harbour scheme. The incremental extension in the bill before the House is a measured and reasonable approach.

I note that we have a thriving creative arts community in Australia. Just last week here in parliament, with Western Australia's Senator Reynolds we co-hosted an event for the Parliamentary Friends of Australian Books and Writers. The event was to honour the short-listed Miles Franklin Literary Award nominees for 2018. It was a great opportunity to meet the authors, the publishers and others involved in the Australian literary industry, including booksellers—we went to a dinner the night before. Deputy Speaker Hastie, I know you would agree that it is bizarre that I have not made it to the Miles Franklin short list yet! But it was a great night to meet some of the fair dinkum authors who have devoted themselves.

I do have some understanding of the creative process in writing. It is much more than an occupation; it is a calling. But monetary rewards are often not substantial. In fact, the rule of thumb in the publishing industry is that half of books published will not break even. So it's tough for editors, publishers and booksellers. Listening to that calling, that compulsion, that itch that can only be scratched by creating, by writing and by doing what artists do, I understand how they have so much skin in the game. You do expose yourself by writing.

In another life many, many years ago, I was also part of a rock band. We still get together every three years, but that's only to fundraise for my re-election—and thank you to all members of my band. The lead singer, John Carozza, who is also actually a painter, a great artist, similarly has that calling, that need to create. Talking to John Carozza and talking to other artists, I see that experience and what it takes to create. The experience has given me a valuable insight into the creative process, whether it be of writing music, making films, writing books or whatever artistic endeavour it is. So I understand the need to protect rights holders in Australia. As I said previously, the artist must eat.

This legislation is a measured response, not too crazy. It looks after the interests of the artist but also recognises that in the digital age there will occasionally be platforms where people publish artistic works without recognising the creator. As I said, this legislation says that the provider must do reasonable things to crack down on repeat infringers. They must comply with the industry codes, they must expeditiously remove the infringing material and they must not receive a financial benefit that is directly attributable to the infringing activity, because that money should, obviously, go to the creators of the artistic piece.

The piece of legislation before the chamber, the Copyright Amendment (Service Providers) Bill 2017, is something that that the Labor Party is happy to support. We know that the continued prosperity of our creative arts community is dependent on supporting our creative artists, and this is something that the parliament can do to make sure that we protect their original work and negotiate appropriate compensation for its use. The artists do have a particular calling whatever that artist be, whether it be poor old Tom Collins, or Joseph Furphy, slaving away at night on his writing after working in his brother's foundry down in country Victoria, creating one of the greatest pieces of literature, Such Is Life, or whether it be someone like Stella Miles Franklin, who never really made much money as a writer but was still able to put away a few dollars—enough to create that lasting legacy of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, something that's now been added to and is now able to support artists to be able to turn their mind to their work, to have a space away from the workplace to create their piece of literature, their piece of film or whatever it is that the artist is creating.

Obviously, we're all keen to support artists, and this is a legislative response that is measured, that is appropriate and that is able to support the creative arts community, because so many of our artistic efforts are also used to increase our links with other countries, particularly with Asia. Some of our musical talents are over there ahead of DFAT, creating lots of contacts with China and South-East Asia, and that's why I recommend this legislation to the House.

Debate interrupted.