Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I do not want to be rude to Senator Milne—I know it is difficult in this period of time to have a proper debate, given we are moving through non-controversial legislation. But, in response to Senator Milne’s main concern, the debate about prospectivity versus retrospectivity and the first sale et cetera has been at the heart of this debate for a long time. It is difficult. We did a lot of work going through the issues and what we have made very clear is, based on the best legal advice we have, we think it is best to go down this path, that the problems, the traps and the complexities involved in doing anything else are too great. Our very clear legal advice was to make the scheme prospective, and that has the impact that the senator points to. But I remind her the alternative is nothing, in a sense. This is an important step. It does not solve all of those issues, many of which are, if you like, legacy issues, but it does put in place a system which will allow resale royalty rights for visual artists into the future. I understand her concern, but we went through a long process of trying to resolve these issues and got a lot of advice. Based on that advice, we determined that we could only go down the prospective application path.