George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Before I begin, can I thank the Senate for passing the legislation which has just had its third reading. We in the coalition have been trying for a very long time for this.

Turning to the Protection of Cultural Objects on Loan Bill 2012, while the coalition support the measures provided for by the bill, we have very grave misgivings about the manner in which the minister and this Labor government have continued to lead the arts and cultural community on about their intentions in the broader area of arts and cultural policy in Australia. And we have seen this at work again in Minister Crean's opening remarks to his second reading speech on this bill.

Time and again, Labor arts ministers have continued to perpetuate the myth—or the threat—that they are about to produce, at any moment, something called the National Cultural Policy. Exactly what this policy will be, nobody knows. All the minister will say is that it will 'join the dots'. The minister's officials, before Senate estimates a fortnight ago, had great difficulty in even confirming that there was a draft policy even after the years of work that had apparently been going into the document under two ministers and in two different departments. And still, like the sword of Damocles, Labor's promised National Cultural Policy continues to hang over the heads of everyone in the arts community in Australia from the Australia Council to the major performing arts companies, the national collecting institutions and the community arts and crafts organisations—indeed, all members of the cultural community who rely upon federal or Commonwealth funding for their programs.

Fortunately, the measures contained in this bill, we expect, will provide greater certainty and confidence for institutions both internationally and domestically when it comes to cultural objects borrowed from overseas for temporary exhibition in Australian libraries, museums and galleries. Insofar as it does this, the coalition supports the bill. It is certainly not controversial to suggest that access to a wide range of cultural objects, be they works of art or cultural artefacts, is to be encouraged. The coalition supports measures which will add to the economic and social viability of our cultural institutions, museums, libraries and galleries. We anticipate that the bill will function to further encourage and enable these institutions to source foreign cultural objects by introducing a scheme which offers a measure of legal protection over the items when they are in Australia for temporary exhibition to institutions approved by the minister.

The scheme introduced by this bill augments the existing Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986,which gave effect in domestic Australian law to the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.

Having said that, I will not detain the Senate any longer. Can I simply indicate that, notwithstanding the deeply lamentable record of the Labor Party when it comes to arts policy and the failure of this government to produce through the life of two parliaments a much vaunted national cultural policy which we still await and which we never expected to see, this small niche measure within the arts portfolio is uncontroversial and has the opposition's support.