Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I rise to take note of a report from the Australian National Audit Office, Management of intellectual property in the Australian government sector. This audit report is effectively the second in as many years looking at how the government is managing its own intellectual property. When one looks through the report from beginning to end, it really is quite damning reading. The report demonstrates, as did its predecessor of some 18 months ago, that the government has done very little—effectively nothing—since 2004 to protect billions and billions of dollars worth of intellectual property. What does that mean? Billions of dollars worth of publicly owned computer assets and software are under threat. It makes worse the ‘brain drain’ which this government has been managing to avoid for many years.

By way of background, what is intellectual property? It is logos, trademarks, publications, films, broadcasts, designs, inventions and computer programs. Intellectual property rights include, by way of a fairly broad definition: patents, trademarks, copyright, circuit layout rights, designs, plant breeders’ rights and, of course, confidential information. Intellectual property protects the brains and ideas that drive our country and our economy. Increasingly, as this country matures into a service dominated economy, the basis of intellectual property and its legal protection becomes paramount and is in need of increasing legal protections.

Intellectual property is an intangible asset that has mushroomed out of all proportion. It has grown in the last 10 years from being worth something in the order of half a billion dollars in 1996 to being worth well over $8 billion in the 2005-06 financial year. That figure of $8 billion includes $3.8 billion of computer software assets properly held by the government and $3.9 billion of other intangibles. Intellectual property is becoming critical as governments outsource more and more work to third parties. If a government manages intellectual property right, it has the capacity to boost competitiveness, generate revenue and stimulate economic growth whilst at the same time ensuring proper return to the legal owner of that property—the government.

But the government’s record on intellectual property falls far short of achieving any of those goals. Here are the facts as outlined in the Australian National Audit Office report. The audit found that two-thirds of government agencies had no policy for the management of intellectual property. Hence, the auditor recommended a whole-of-government approach to the ownership, administration of and entitlement to intellectual property. Two years after those recommendations, little has been achieved and that whole-of-government approach still sits in a back drawer.

Such an approach, according to the government, was meant to have been completed by May of last year, but right from the beginning of this process—and even as I speak—confusion remains over whether this responsibility rests with the Attorney-General, Mr Ruddock, or the finance minister, Senator Minchin. More disturbingly, intellectual property management continues to have a very low profile within the government. There does not appear to be a minister, a department or an agency that is driving to protect the government’s right to over $8 billion of intellectual property that the government has been responsible for creating in the last 10 years. That is despite a government acknowledgement of the importance of intellectual property management.

We have to acknowledge that the government recognises its responsibility in this area. Indeed, in the lead-up to the 2004 election the government released a policy statement on IP management. In Connecting an innovative Australia, the government promised to ensure that ‘all agencies have appropriate intellectual property management strategies’. So the government was aware of the problem and it devised a solution. It was a matter of the government, if re-elected in 2004, moving to cement the negotiations between the two departments—AG’s and Finance—so that there could be either a whole-of-government approach or individual line portfolio responsibility. But in the almost three years since that time we have had no progress at all. It has to be said: this is another broken promise in this area from the government.

Instead, there appears to be confusion as to which department is responsible for developing and implementing this whole-of-government approach to intellectual property management as outlined by the Audit Office in its performance audit. A chain of correspondence between various departments, the Attorney-General and the minister for finance, Senator Minchin, dates back to the original audit in 2004. As of last August, the Attorney-General and Senator Minchin were still writing letters over the minutiae of responsibility for intellectual property management across all government agencies and departments.

This latest audit concludes: ‘Almost three years after agreement to the earlier audit report recommendations, an overarching approach and guidance to agencies on intellectual property management has not been achieved.’ The audit notes gaps in record keeping, making it hard to know what decisions, if any, have been made regarding this overarching approach to intellectual property. There was also insufficient recording of key events, decisions and differences of opinion, ‘making it difficult to track and report on progress against expected milestones’. Also, there has been little attention paid to date to how intellectual property principles will be applied across government.

Overall, it is a damning audit of an essential government action which should be directed to protecting its own property, which is in the order of $8 billion in 2006 figures that the government has either created or outsourced to be created by other agencies or firms. It is not good enough. At stake are billions of dollars worth of assets. As the Audit Office concluded, the government not only is not managing these properly but is not managing them at all. The government needs to pay closer attention to independent audits such as this and heed their recommendations. Hollow election promises are inadequate. The government needs to effectively manage publicly owned property. Innovative Australian software, for instance, needs to be protected with legal backing so that it cannot be misused, misappropriated or pirated.

This report by the Australian National Audit Office is a timely reminder of the government’s ongoing shortcomings and deficiencies in a critical area that does not receive a great deal of public notoriety but, as I have said, has developed an asset backing of something in the order of $500 million back in 1996 to $8 billion to $9 billion in the 2005-06 financial year. In a 10-year period we have gone from half a billion dollars to $8 billion or $9 billion worth. As our economy changes, as wealth is created in a service economy, as wealth is derived by the owners of products that are created, they increasingly need to have their legal rights protected and maintained by the government across all agencies.

One only has to look at the large outsourced contracts that are increasingly being made by departments like defence, veterans’ affairs, families and community services and agencies like Centrelink, to name a few, to know how many assets are being created, how much intellectual property rights are being ignored and how much brainpower is being put into a range of products that the government does not even know it owns. It shows no interest in maintaining a register or establishing a regime across government, across portfolios and across agencies to protect the $9 billion or $10 billion worth of intellectual property that government agencies have created in the last 10 years, and which over the next 10 years will grow to something in the order of $20 billion to $25 billion.