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

The painter John Olsen once remarked, ‘On the resale of art everyone makes money but the artist is forgotten.’ The government’s decision, announced in the 2006 budget, not to adopt a resale royalty scheme known as droite de suite for visual artists is a slap in the face to the arts community and particularly to Indigenous artists, who stood to gain both additional rights in their work and the prospect of future income into the longer term as their paintings were on-sold at prices much higher than the first sale. The burgeoning Indigenous art market is now valued at well in excess of $100 million and provides many examples of the escalation in prices that a resale royalty scheme would apply to. For example, a Johnny Warangkula Tjupurra painting, Water Dreaming at Kalipinyapa, was originally sold for $100 but was resold in July 2000 for $486,500. That is an extraordinary escalation in price for an Aboriginal artwork, and there are numerous other examples.

The Myer report of 2002 into visual arts considered this question in detail and recommended the introduction of a resale royalty scheme. This recommendation has subsequently been supported by the Australian Copyright Council, Arts Law Australia, the National Association for the Visual Arts and the Association of Northern Kimberley and Arnhem Aboriginal Artists, and former Minister Alston was in favour of it as well. The Labor Party has long championed the introduction of a resale royalty scheme, with former shadow arts ministers Kate Lundy and Bob McMullan both introducing private member’s bills to amend the Copyright Act and to provide for resale royalty. The government provided no support for these bills, yet recently the Attorney-General has spent 18 months considering the issue.

Similar resale royalty schemes are under way in the United Kingdom and Europe and embody the necessary recognition that visual artists’ rights extend beyond the first sale of an artwork. Artists often struggle to make a living from their work, even those who achieve success, and sometimes success is a long time coming. For Indigenous artists, many of whom live in impoverished communities, the situation is arguably worse as the options they have for supplanting their income are limited.

In Tuesday night’s budget the government, via the Attorney-General and the minister for the arts, dismissed a resale royalty scheme while announcing a package of initiatives to assist individual artists to build their commercial marketplace and business skills. The government was responding to a fierce lobbying campaign by former state president of the Liberal Party Michael Kroger on behalf of a number of leading art auction houses and, as a result of that big-end-of-town lobbying, has now quashed the prospects of visual artists having an ancillary right to a tiny percentage of the profits of their work when resold. This is a terrible decision for visual artists, who will note this occasion as the day when their rights and opportunities for earning a little more for their work were denied.

I acknowledge the government did announce $6 million for Indigenous art centres and commercial training for artists, and it will be a huge relief to the art centres, who do good work and who have been struggling with a chronic shortage of support due to earlier government cuts. But these necessary and much needed programs are no substitute for a resale royalty scheme for visual artists. In fact the announcements have all the appearance of being a sweetener for Indigenous artists, who, based on research published by art-e Australia, have missed out on something approaching $25 million of royalties since the Myer report recommended a resale royalty scheme in 2002.

To be denied the opportunity to access some $20 million to $25 million due to them if a resale royalty scheme of this kind were introduced, simply because the large auction houses in Australia do not consider it a necessary step in terms of the protection of artists’ rights, is a disgrace. The case for a resale royalty scheme remains strong and Labor will pursue it to enable visual artists, including Indigenous artists, to gain necessary long-term income for their work.