Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) music fans are missing out on tickets because bots have bought up tickets in bulk and these tickets are being on-sold at inflated prices;

(b) music fans are also having to endure the disappointment and the loss of missing out on seeing live music through no fault of their own but because websites like Viagogo allow the selling of fake tickets and tickets that have been sold multiple times over;

(c) major search engines are profiting from advertising these websites and the tickets sold on these websites at the top of search results; and

(d) the loss felt by many people is not simply the loss of an experience but a substantial loss of money for what can be one of their biggest discretionary purchases of the year; and

(2) calls on the Government to explain the action being taken to ensure that if someone buys a ticket to live music, they know they can turn up and get entry to the music they love.

It is impossible to be serious about anything in arts or cultural policy without also defending the right of concertgoers, of people who want to enjoy and experience the arts, and, effectively, defending the audience as well. Without the audience being able to attend these events and without the audience being able to trust the pathway by which they get tickets to attend events, the whole system falls over.

What is happening now with concert tickets needs to be seen in this very particular context, which I have referred to in the motion, and it is this: for many Australians, buying a ticket to a major music event will be the biggest discretionary purchase they make in the course of an entire year, and to have confidence in buying that ticket and then being able to get in the door is essential. But what is happening now is not like the old days, where some people would wake up early, buy a heap of tickets at Ticketek at the local shopping centre and then be outside the door trying to onsell. At the very least, for all the problems that involved, you knew that you were buying from a scalper; you knew that was what was happening. But now people have absolutely no idea.

I was chatting only a few minutes ago to the member for Holt about it. He has heard me refer previously to the viagogo website. I said to him: 'Just check on your phone now. No-one starts at viagogo to buy tickets. Just type in "Midnight Oil tickets" and see what comes up.' Straight away on his phone, only a few minutes ago, up comes 'Midnight Oil viagogo tickets, official site'. People are being taken by the search engines directly to a site which is selling fake tickets, selling tickets at an extraordinary premium, and onselling the same ticket over and over again so that only the first person to the gate on the day will get in the door. At the event the barcode gets scanned, one person gets in, and all the other people who bought the same ticket on viagogo never get in the door, because they get told, 'Oh, no, that ticket has already been used.' For the fake tickets, even the first person does not get in the door.

I thought, after we had seen it come up on the phone, 'What happens for a concert that has not even been announced yet but that we have been told is on the way?' I typed in 'Paul McCartney tickets', because there have been rumours that a McCartney tour might be on the way. Well, up it comes. It takes me straight to viagogo. I click through and we get a photograph of Paul McCartney, we get the words 'Paul McCartney tickets' and we get told this is the first time we have ever seen Paul McCartney in Australia, which would be news to people who have previously seen him in Australia. Then we get the date that he is playing at the Perth Astor Theatre on 22 July, which is great. You go to the Astor Theatre website and you find out it is a tribute concert. At every stage what is happening on the viagogo website is deceiving people. StubHub is not much better.

The reason people are being consistently caught is that the search engines—and it is not just Google; you can go through Yahoo and a series of different search engines, such as Bing and DuckDuckGo—are all accepting advertising money from viagogo so that, when you type in the act and the word 'tickets', the first thing that will appear will be a link that takes you to a site designed to rip you off. It is designed to rip people off and to tell them that they have to move really quickly or they will miss out.

The search engines know about it, and they just keep taking the advertising revenue. Viagogo obviously know what they are doing, and they are making money overseas out of it. Until the government of Australia is willing to start making this a priority, to say that we will not stand for Australian consumers being systematically ripped off, and to take a stand on this, it is going to keep happening. It is not enough to simply put out the message, 'Be careful of viagogo,' because a whole lot of people will only buy a ticket once every five years or once every 10 years when a particular act arrives in this country. The government needs to be willing to take the lead on this. It is not good enough when thousands of people are turning up at the door, having paid more than the ticket was worth, and then not getting into the venue. (Time expired)

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Damian Drum (Murray, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take great pleasure in rising to contribute to the motion put forward by the member opposite, the member for Watson. It is a very important issue, and it is an issue that does not just apply to the major concerts and the major theatrical events. This is an issue that filters right down to, effectively, any festival or any musical event that the groups who do this work behind the scenes are confident will sell out. If the Meredith Music Festival in Victoria has a history of selling out each and every year, what happens is the first 1,000 or 2,000 tickets available are bought by scammers overseas that obviously have no intention of coming along to the event; however, they are going to recoup their money four or five times over by reselling the tickets at a later stage.

These issues have previously been put to the Victorian government. There is a way that we can address this, and it is by giving major event status to each of these festivals or events. When an event has major event status, each of the tickets that are released is, effectively, registered and therefore can be traced. As we know, you are simply not allowed to scalp tickets that are at a price over and above the face value of those tickets. One problem with this is that many of the promoters do not want to go through the hassle and expense of having their event declared a major event. They do not want to partake in all of the regulation that surrounds the Major Sporting Events Act 2009. It does not even need to be a sporting event; they can fit into these areas. So there is a bit of an issue here in relation to the promoters and event organisers. They do not want to go down the pathway of being declared a major event.

However, the concept of the member opposite, who has put this motion to the House, remains absolutely valid: many people are being duped. I was not aware of the viagogo website, which the member makes reference to. I did have a quick look while he was talking and, yes, there is an opportunity to lose your money very easily on some of these sites. It is especially worrying when everyday people, not even looking to go to viagogo, get directed there by the search engines themselves. It is an issue that warrants both the federal government and the state governments getting their heads together to see if an outcome can be addressed.

I know that the Australian government is very strong in its support for live performances in Australia. Certainly, there is this whole push towards the communities and the arts sector themselves. I know that the Minister for Small Business, Michael McCormack, has the portfolio responsibility for the Australian Consumer Law in the particular area relating to Australian audiences' consumer interests and how they are protected. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission have been working closely with the live performance industry to ensure safeguards are put in place to prevent ticket scalping, particularly through the use of bots. The department is working closely with the Treasury to look for options to address these concerns about online ticket scalping. However, the issues and options need to be considered carefully and methodically, including the practicality of trying to regulate the bots as opposed to clearer consumer protection rights in this area.

Whilst I give the member opposite full credit for bringing this issue to the House and making everybody aware that this is going on, I would encourage all levels of government to get together. Even local governments will pay the price when everyday local people are denied access to places such as Meredith and a range of other festivals around Victoria and Australia, and when people who are actually able to go are ripped off. People who wanted to go and see Paul McCartney ended up watching a tribute band. That is just horrendous. If this is going to happen on an ongoing basis, it needs to be addressed. (Time expired)

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to second this motion. I went to a gig a few weeks ago at the Metro in Sydney—Julia Jacklin. I do not get to see a lot of music at big Sydney venues. I live a long way from the city and I tend to make the most of the local music scene that we have in places like Katoomba in my electorate of Macquarie—that is, if I have a chance to head out. But I did go to the Metro. My son, Harry, is Julia Jacklin's bass player, so there was a good reason to see them play for the last time in Sydney before they headed to Europe for a few months. It was not just me who went. It was a whole bunch of family and friends who helped fill the absolutely sold-out gig. We went with tickets on my phone, pretty confident that we had real tickets that would get us in the door, and indeed they did.

But what must it feel like when you have travelled for several hours to go to a gig and get there only to be told that you just cannot come in? For people in my electorate, just to go to Sydney can mean booking a hotel for the night because of the poor train service, which can add hours and hours to your journey at the other end of the night. And so to get to the door, only to be told, 'Sorry—you've got dud tickets,' would be devastating. Imagine the same thing happening if you have bought tickets for a three-day music festival and you get there and you are turned away? This is what we are seeing happen in Australia.

Of course, the problem of dodgy tickets has always been with us; scalpers have been around for as long as musicians have been performing. I am not quite sure how we got tickets for gigs like Australian Crawl and Cold Chisel in the eighties, but I seem to recall a long queue and giving someone the cash or turning up on the night and hoping that a scalper would give you tickets and that they would be legit! It has really changed since then.

I remember the pressure of trying to buy my first online tickets. I recall punching the rehit button repeatedly to get tickets for my then 13-year-old son to the 2007 Red Hot Chili Peppers Stadium Arcadium World Tour Sydney show. We did it, but the stress was huge! The big problems that we are seeing overseas are being exacerbated by bots. To be clear: a bot is a computer program that automates the ticket-buying process, completing it faster than a human can—including searching for tickets, filling in identity details and payment information. It lets the ticket scalpers purchase large quantities by quickly running multiple transactions at the same time.

In the early 2000s I was just competing with other human beings; now you are competing with robots. It means those same tickets can go online for resale really fast, while the general public are still trying to make a sale from the primary site. That is why the official site might sell the ticket for one price and the unofficial, but very official-looking, site has it for $50 or $250 more.

Sites like viagogo are a huge part of the problem. They are branded as official sites but they actually allow the selling of fake tickets and tickets that have been sold multiple times over. Also, viagogo seems to play very loose with the details of the show, and the member for Watson has highlighted the problems with the Paul McCartney tour. Rumours are running hot that McCartney will tour Australia, so if you see something flash up as an ad on your search engine saying, 'Paul McCartney—Perth,' then you are very easily going to be confused and deceived by the resale site.

It does not really matter which site we are talking about; the search engines and the fake ticket sites are a real problem. I would encourage people to jump on to see. What strikes me about them is the high-pressure sales tactic. You find yourself in a queue with a stick figure moving through and with the clock ticking—the pressure to make the decisions fast and to sign off your purchase is really on. It does not encourage you to check the details out thoroughly, and for less-regular ticket purchasers this is a disaster waiting to happen. Already, tickets for the Dan Sultan concert—also at the Metro—are still available through the reputable sources and are on these viagogo sites.

We should not ignore the fact that major search engines are making profits from the advertising. It is time the government explained in detail what they are doing to ensure that if someone buys a ticket to a live music gig that they then have confidence they can turn up, get in and see the musician they have paid to see. With live performance being such a key part of a musician's income stream now we really need a live music industry for visitors and locals that everyone can access with confidence. Our own live music industry helps us tell Australian stories, not just here but to the rest of the world. We need to make sure that people who turn up to these gigs have a great time supporting Australian and visiting talent.

Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to rise to support the honourable member for Watson's motion, also moved in his capacity as the shadow minister for the arts.

It is part of the life cycle: it is true these days that if I need to purchase tickets to a concert they are more likely to be to The Wiggles than to Pink Floyd's 'The Wall', but I have to say that the principle in relation to this very worthy motion remains precisely the same. And that simply is that there is an enormous risk of misleading and deceptive conduct right here in our community every day when it comes to hardworking mums and dads, whether they want to go and see a rock concert or The Wiggles—The Cockroaches as they were back in the day, before they were The Wiggles, I should say—or both, being taken advantage of, with money that they can ill afford to hand over if they are not going to be getting what they reasonably bargained for, and that is tickets to live entertainment.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Wiggles are on viagogo.

Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Wiggles, I was just informed by the honourable member for Watson, are also on viagogo. There is no aspect of the community that is safe—not even The Wiggles and their Big Red Car are safe—from the perils of the bots that are dispensing tickets that are arguably either overpriced or, more to the point, not what they purport to be.

I have to say—just going back to the issue of Paul McCartney that was raised earlier—that the Astor Theatre is right in the heart of my electorate, in the federal seat of Perth. I must say that, but for the fact of driving down Beaufort Street and seeing the banners advertising the Paul McCartney tribute show, one would have no reasonable way of knowing that a consumer was purchasing a ticket to a tribute show as opposed to ostensibly the real deal, a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many of us who grew up loving the music of the Beatles, the Wings and then Paul McCartney in his often much-maligned—in my view, for no good reason—solo career.

It goes to the heart of a very, very serious issue. The serious issue is simply that, in today's society, notwithstanding a technical breach of 'misleading and deceptive conduct', this practice is now so widespread that, without the government acting upon this motion brought by the honourable member for Watson, we risk seeing this conduct perpetrated time and time again. It is a practice that not only harms consumers but also harms artists, and it also harms small communities and businesses like the Astor Theatre, who are unnecessarily targeted by disappointed consumers who mistakenly believe that there may be some culpability involved at the shopfront in relation to marketing something that people just are not expecting to receive. It is why we saw the United States Congress passing the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, or the BOTS Act, making it unlawful to buy up tickets in bulk, using bots, for the purpose of reselling them at a profit. It is also why we saw this side of the Chamber support a motion in the other place that was passed in or about late March, calling for action from this government to protect consumers in this space.

On behalf of Australian performing-arts consumers—and I am delighted to join the shadow minister for the arts, the member for Watson—I say quite frankly in this place that enough is enough. Consumers want and deserve better protection. Artists want and deserve better protection. Primary ticket sellers want better protection. Technology in the 21st century evolves very rapidly, and in this place we need to make sure that we get ahead of the curve to respond to disruption in a circumstance where we can see that the appropriate level of regulation here would prevent the misleading and deceptive conduct that is happening all over the country right now. Surely it is not a challenge beyond us here to craft a fix for this that will protect consumers whilst facing a legitimate ticket resale market for those who have had to change their plans—although, in fairness, it may well be beyond the wit of those opposite. They are struggling in education. They are struggling in climate change. They show no signs of responding to the needs of consumers. I certainly hope those hardworking families who need to see The Wiggles will get what they deserve. (Time expired)

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.