Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Makin and wholly concur with his comments regarding women's AFL. It's a fantastic sport—very competitive—and it is wonderful to see the athleticism and talent of so many young women throughout Australia. It is now being mirrored in the great sport of rugby league, as well, which is fantastic to see. Australians love their sport. We love playing sport, we love watching sport and we love reliving it often. The Monday morning coaches and stories about how a team fared on the weekend—what went wrong, how you would have done better—are folklore in Australian workplaces and homes throughout the country. Increasingly, like all aspects of society, with social media and new digital platforms developing we're seeing more and more chances for images and photographs of people participating in sport to spread throughout not only the internet but other platforms as well. We have a recent example of this with the controversy—highly unwarranted—that was created in respect of the image of Tayla Harris kicking that fantastic goal during the AFLW season. What a photograph! It captured one of Australian sport's most iconic moments. It was a tribute to her and her teammates' athleticism, a tribute to the AFL and to that particular sport and to the promotion of women's involvement in sport. We all know, unfortunately, the controversy that surrounded it. But I think the important thing to remember is that at the end of the day Channel Seven put that photo back up on their website because of the public reaction—because of the reaction of the Australian people about their love for that image and all that it purveyed about women's sport and athleticism. It highlights the importance of ensuring that we're protecting major sporting events' indicia and images, including certain photographs, in the future.

This is a bill which amends the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Act 2014. This act is out of date and refers to past events, so this is really about updating that particular act. This amendment bill updates the act so that it refers to upcoming major sporting events, specifically the ICC T20 World Cup 2020 cricket tournament, comprising both the men's and the women's tournaments, to be held in Australia in 2020. The amendments make the ICC T20 World Cup a major sporting event under the act, insert information required to protect related intellectual property such as the event's name, the logo, the branding and similar things, and set the period of protection. The protections provided by these amendments are standard and necessary for major sporting events hosted in Australia and mirror the major protections provided under the act for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 and the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games last year, both of which were sensational sporting events. They brought a lot of tourism and benefit for the Australian economy and Australian society.

The ICC T20 World Cup 2020 Local Organising Committee hopes that this bill can pass the parliament as soon as possible to ensure the amendments to the act become effective at least one year prior to the women's T20 World Cup, which will be held from February next year. Labor understands that these protections will be complemented by equivalent protections against ambush marketing, to be introduced by the government of various states and territories that will be hosting the matches in 2020.

This is a reform that is required. It's certainly something that the industry has requested. It's good to see that the government has acted on this. Labor certainly supports this reform. I'm sure that, when these events are held in Australia, we're going to see, both in the men's and the women's categories, some exceptional sporting achievements, and it's appropriate that the images, logos and indicia that are associated with these sporting events are protected, and that is what this bill will do.

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