Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Reconciliation and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

Following on from the contributions made by my colleagues, including the member for Lowe, in this debate on the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill 2006, I want to begin by noting that these amendments are very much overdue and that the reform process that has been undertaken in relation to copyright has been pretty stilted. Copyright has an importance which not only goes to the heart of the authorship of works inasmuch as all creative artists and authors of works have copyright on the material and the work that they create but also extends to patents in the material that inventors, individuals and companies and others develop over time.

As we move into a digital age where most material, particularly knowledge and information, will be transmitted by the internet, where the digital economy will become increasingly important and where there is the necessity for us to have clarity for those communities, those companies and those individuals who are participating in the digital economy, the need for a framework for the conduct of their activities within the digital economy becomes much more urgent. So the need for this government to move in a much more speedy and expeditious manner to deal with the many complexities in terms of considering copyright review and copyright generally is self-evident, I think.

We need a discussion about copyright into the longer term. I invite the government to consider that the next phase of its copyright review process in broad policy terms is the need to have a much more open discussion about the nature of copyright and how copyright will be asserted, regulated, protected and exploited in the digital age. I am not sure whether the House would be aware that there is now a significant discussion being undertaken in other jurisdictions, particularly in Europe, around the notion of what is called a creative commons.

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