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

I am pleased to speak on the Tax Laws Amendment (Resale Royalty Right for Visual Artists) Bill 2009. This bill implements in part our 2008 budget commitment to introduce a resale right scheme for visual artists. Resale rights are about ensuring that artists share in the appreciating value of their artwork and obviously have particular relevance to Indigenous artists. There is not a lot of money in being an artist. Like emerging authors of fiction and many others in the creative industries, they are often told, ‘Don’t give up your day job.’ Thankfully, many artists and writers do not listen to this advice. They persevere and stick with what they have a passion for.

In their report Don’t give up your day job: an economic study of professional artists in Australia, the Australia Council for the Arts found that most artists earned less than $7,500 a year from their art despite the great contribution that they and their art makes to Australian society and culture. However, Indigenous art has enjoyed considerable growth in recent years, but unfortunately the Indigenous artists themselves have not shared in this growth. Back in 2002 cultural economist Hans Hoegh-Guldberg was commissioned to scope the value of Indigenous arts and crafts sales in Australia. He estimated that the total value of genuine Indigenous arts and craft sales at $100 million to $120 million a year, and half of these were in sales to overseas visitors. This is obviously good for our balance of trade and good for tourism as people go home with something they are happy with.

Unfortunately, while the value of Indigenous art is improving rapidly, little of the value of the art sales worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in some rare cases millions of dollars, is returned to the artist and the communities that created them in the first place. Often with Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, their stories and legends and images are collectively owned, but no benefit flows back to the Indigenous owner or the bigger mob that was responsible for the image. I am sure that for anyone with any common sense it does not seem right that a ritzy city auction house should continue to pocket a large cut of the value of Indigenous art for resales while the emerging artist is left with the distant memory in their pocket from the original sale.

In some cases the disparity between the original price and the on-sale price just a few years later can be staggering. For example, in July 1997 a Clifford Possum Japaltjarri painting sold for just $1,200 to some lucky person. Ten years later it sold at auction for $2.4 million, but obviously the painter did not receive a red cent as a result of the appreciation in the value of the painting. If a resale rights scheme was in place it would have ensured that Clifford Possum Japaltjarri would have shared a small percentage of the increased value of the work.

In government, the coalition commissioned the Myer inquiry into contemporary visual arts and crafts. The Myer report, which was released in June 2002, recommended the government introduce a resale rights for visual artists scheme but the Howard government failed to act on the recommendation. Maybe they were getting bad advice at the time, I am not sure. We do not know why, but they failed to act.

The guts of the resale rights for visual artists scheme is contained in another bill before the House and will introduce a far more equitable system that will ensure financial rewards for artists—

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