Question Time

Ticket Scalping

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (15:08): My question is to the Minister for Recreation and Sport. Minister, how many warnings, fines or prosecutions have been handed out for ticket scalping since the Major Events Act was introduced?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport, Minister for Racing) (15:08): None, sir. The reason for that is there has not been evidence of people actually engaging in scalping. People have put up ads on Gumtree and on eBay offering tickets for many times more than the face value. When they are spotted on Gumtree and eBay they are taken down. So, they might be up there for an hour or something like that, but the transaction will not proceed. There is nothing to prosecute if a transaction has not taken place.

We work closely, as does the promoter of various events, and the Cricket World Cup was a good example of that—the ICC would be monitoring eBay and Gumtree, and if any of those sites were running ads where people were going well above the odds, then those ads would be taken down. Any promoter of any event is in the same boat and in the same position to do that.

There was a fair bit of misreporting around the scalping issue in relation to the India v Pakistan game. There were people saying that tickets were changing hands for thousands of dollars down at the ground. I was down there and I had a couple of spare tickets to give away, as did other people, and we could not give them away, so I do not think there would have been many mugs willing to pay thousands of thousands of dollars for tickets when they had people like me offering them for free. A lot of other people were down there offering them for face value.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: It is true. I was down there. I was actually at the game. I walked around for a good hour before the game. I was talking to the media from India—

Mr Whetstone: The same tickets were on the website for over 24 hours.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Well, I don't think they were and, when we talked to eBay and Gumtree and the ICC, they said they were watching the websites very closely and pulling those tickets down. I must say that there were a lot of tickets on there, but they were within that 10 per cent threshold. If you have bought a $60 ticket and you want to sell it for $66, you are allowed to do that. Why would you pay $2,000 or $3,000 or $1 million for a ticket when there are other tickets on there for $66 or $120 and they are within that threshold?

I kept going onto the website and there were plenty of tickets there. For one reason or another, people had bought tickets to the World Cup. They might have bought them in Victoria or in New South Wales and then, for one reason or another, they could not actually make the trip to South Australia for the game. They might have had a family member fall ill or, for whatever reason, they could not get to the game. We should not prevent people from being able to sell their tickets and, by putting on a 10 per cent threshold, that is fine.

If there are people who are offering way above the odds, and if there are one or two of them and there are 50 tickets being offered at face value or 10 per cent above, you would be an absolute idiot to pay any more than the face value or the 10 per cent above. I would say, 'Buyer beware; don't be an idiot; don't pay more than you should.' The other thing that we need to look at is, when you buy a ticket on the internet, it might not be legitimate. We saw people who turned up to the One Direction concert at Footy Park and they had tickets that were fraudulent. They had been sold on the internet by fraudsters. I would say, look out, be careful.