Page 2710 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 16 September 2014
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trading in this zone unless authorised; anti-ambush marketing provisions; and ticket reselling, scalping, being banned at values above face value, plus reasonable on-costs.
I will go through each one of these in more detail. The security and crowd control issues are being enacted, or are already enacted, in other states and territories. Failure to do so would put Canberra at risk in its ability to host major events. We are aware of the security concerns that exist across a broad range of areas, and we support these measures in principle.
Similarly, crowd control is an issue of which we are aware, and generally we are supportive. We accept that the current laws may be inadequate, in that the only recourse is ejection, which by its definition is a reactive rather than a proactive measure. My office has received, in a briefing from the government, examples where the penalty provisions can be used in a proactive sense, and this would be desirable, but, as ever, we look to review the application of these provisions.
The third element then is the commercial protection issues, and they are, in essence, requirements of event organisers to consider jurisdictions when holding events. It is important to note that these provisions are limited to declared major events within a declared zone. Existing businesses have specific exemption, which would be something that we would insist upon, obviously, and I think there would be consensus agreement on that. We will look at how that plays out when these provisions are enacted.
So generally speaking, we are supportive of those businesses that take the risks to support an event, and before any tickets are sold, and accept that some protection for that investment is reasonable from a public policy perspective to encourage more organisations to take that risk, let alone take the steps to bring those events to our city.
The issue then of ticket reselling, the fourth element, has created the most controversy and certainly the most amount of correspondence that we have received and, as I understand it, representations also to the government. These issues were discussed in a Senate committee earlier this year. Despite what was originally proclaimed by the minister, the committee recommended that “there was no need to change regulation” but operators “could do more to protect customers from unscrupulous arguments”.
It is arguable that there should not be any further regulation in this area at all but that there should be a policy response where government works with industry to protect consumers and event organisers. Given, however, that there is legislation before us, we have to look at the policy itself. Firstly, there is also the policy position that, if a person owns an item, it is essentially theirs to sell at any price that they can.
Is it up to governments to refuse to allow a free market to basically take place, and really is the government’s role just to make sure that it is a safe and legitimate market? There are certainly resellers arguing that it is going to happen regardless and a regulated, secure market provides the protection for consumers. That is a point that they make there. Without a market like that, there is fear that this legislation could have the perverse effect of driving a lot of this onto the black market and removing some of the safeguards that are developing in this place.
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