Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

It is heartbreaking to come into the House thinking that there might be some graciousness shown by the Attorney for our work on what was a particularly difficult set of amendments of laws. I noted that earlier in his speech the Attorney was determined not to provide Labor with any credit for the changes. But, whoever it is that the government wants to attribute the changes to, we are delighted that the government has made very significant changes following the Senate committee report and following very intense lobbying from a number of people from different advocacy, consumer and industry groups who were expressing concern with a number of provisions in the bill.

We are more than happy for the Attorney to indicate that it is his view and the government’s view that the balance is right in this legislation. We have some reservations about the overall approach that has been taken, but we agree with the Attorney that the difficulty with copyright is always the balancing act. How do you make sure that consumers are going to be adequately protected? How do you make sure that we support our creative industries? How do you make sure that the new technologies in the industries around that are supported? The process and the significant change that has been accepted by the government show that it is a difficult area. Ultimately, the government is the government, and it is up to them to take the policy decisions that they do. But we were in particular worried about the strict liability provisions. The regime that is now in place will be a much more sensible one.

As we indicated in the Senate, we are still concerned about some of the changes to the technological protection measures. We moved amendments that the government did not accept, despite the recommendations of both the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs and the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. It is a little unfair to say that this is some ideological view. It is actually something that members of the coalition unanimously supported in both of those committees. If there is an ideological view here, it is a determined one of the Attorney’s not to take that approach. Nevertheless, ultimately—as I said—it is for the government to make those decisions and we are very pleased and prepared to be quite gracious about those changes.

I would like to thank the Attorney’s office, because there has been a lot of toing and froing, making sure everyone knows what changes mean, and arguments over drafting—all those sorts of things, which can be very difficult for our staff. Thank you for the support that was given. Even though this is a little bit unusual, I would particularly like to thank two of my colleagues in the Senate, Senator Ludwig and Senator Lundy. They spent a lot of time and energy on these provisions. All of us know a lot more about copyright and are even more convinced that we do not want to be copyright lawyers if we ever end up not being in this place.

I also want to record my thanks to the very many advocates in industry, organisations and consumer groups who put in a lot of time and effort to get very quick responses when we were talking about a range of different amendments as the process went through. Labor is concerned that, with changing technology, changing international standards and a range of other things that are changing in our environment, our copyright laws are going to continue to come under significant pressure. We do think that there will be a time when it will be much better for us to step back and talk about the particular range of often competing interests that we want Australian copyright laws to be able to protect or support—not when we are debating just a particular set of changes.

We feel we have been able to make the changes a bit better and the exceptions a bit clearer, and some of the amendments about time shifting and format shifting have been improved; but the very big questions about how to balance the public interests when there are often a number of public interests competing with each other are very difficult to deal with in a forum where we are looking at specific changes to the legislation. That may be something that we will have a chance to look at in the future. Labor would certainly support that sort of approach—as well as making sure that consumers are protected, that educational interests are protected and that we still provide sufficient incentives for our creative industries and the technologies that are growing around them. It is a big ask to balance all of those things, but I think that this law is far better than the one that we were debating in the House previously. I thank the government for accepting the changes. Whether or not they are prepared to accept that they came from us or elsewhere, it is nevertheless a better bill because of the Senate process and Labor’s involvement.

Question agreed to.

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