David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move the second reading amendment that was circulated in my name and which makes clear that there is much more work to be done when it comes to the section 28 issue in relation to the Copyright Amendment Bill 2026:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that the Copyright Amendment Bill 2026 permits teachers to use copyright material in online lessons delivered via platforms such as Zoom;

(b) calls on the Government to ensure that copyright law delivers genuine clarity for educational institutions operating in a modern learning environment by progressing amendments to section 28 of the Copyright Act 1968 to allow lessons to be recorded for a limited period, with appropriate access controls and destruction requirements in place, so that students who cannot attend lessons due to illness, disability, or other reasons are able to catch up; and

(c) notes that ensuring educational institutions are able to operate in rapidly changing digital environments will be critical going forward".

When we've been speaking with stakeholders in this space—and I particularly want to reference the education providers—they point out that so much of what happens now in universities and in TAFEs is education that is provided online. Often there'll be a lecture recorded in real life. It is beamed out, sometimes, and put live online so that students can remotely access it while the lecture is being delivered. We understand that the proposed section 28 amendments would largely capture that and ensure that copyright isn't payable for copyrighted materials that are transmitted live.

But, of course, Acting Deputy President, as you would know, as would anyone who's spoken to students studying at universities and TAFE now would know, quite often what happens is, if students are unable to access the lecture in real life and unable to see it when it's being broadcast—they may be ill, they may have a clash in their timetables or they may have work—they rely upon a recording of it. They log in using their student ID; they access the recording of the video.

As I understand it, the government doesn't intend section 28 to provide protection for education institutions when students are accessing their educational materials from a recording. There is no mechanism in place currently to provide for payments for that because it hasn't traditionally been the provision of copyrighted material that copyright owners have previously sought to recover payments from education providers. Our second reading amendment on behalf of the Greens addresses that pretty fundamental problem in section 28.

I want to be clear on the part of the Greens. We believe that we should be removing all barriers we possibly can so that public education providers—our universities, our schools and our TAFES—can have as great a penetration as possible into the community and the community can have as great an access as possible to education resources. It should not be constrained by arcane provisions in copyright law. I don't know why it is that the Labor government doesn't also back in public education like the Greens, but it's for those reasons that I commend the second reading amendment as moved.

(Quorum formed)