Ticket Scalping

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (20:32): I move:

That this council notes that the Major Events Act 2013 is not fit for the purpose of addressing the issue of contemporary ticket scalping.

This motion is very simple. It says is that this government has developed a response to ticket scalping that is not fit for purpose. This motion simply states that the Major Events Act 2013 is not fit for purpose for ticket scalping. I think we have visited this issue before in this place, and members would be aware that I have raised this issue before in this place. Back in 2012 I thought we had an agreement from government that ticket scalping was an issue. Certainly the Major Events Act was touted as a solution to that issue.

The reality is that the Major Events Act was never going to cover the field when it came to ticket scalping. Ticket scalping is the vernacular, as the Attorney called it in the other place, for a practice that has become a little more complicated than simply somebody in a trench coat outside a venue offering you a ticket, usually at an inflated price. In the old theories of how ticket scalping worked before the digital era, I think that is how most people would imagine that ticket scalping worked.

Ticket scalping is, of course, a much more complicated affair. Certainly Choice, the premier consumer organisation of this country, ACA, is taking ticket scalping very seriously. They have had over 1,000 submissions, and have called for law reform at a state and territory level, and I know that there are moves afoot at a federal level.

The complexities of ticket scalping in this era include not just that metaphorical person in a trench coat trying to make a quick buck, profiting usually on the basis of a fan wanting to see a type of live performance, usually not supported by the artist whose product is being made a profit out of by somebody totally unrelated to their craft or their sport.

It has actually become quite complicated and endemic in this era. We have heard stories and seen documented evidence of people turning up to shows with tickets that are not legit, tickets that have been fabricated, tickets through forums such as Viagogo, which appear on a Google search to be being sold in the first place by the legitimate seller of those tickets. These onselling practices are even more disreputable when you realise that often those usually inflated price tickets are sold, for example, to an adult but are a child's ticket, and that adult is unable to use that ticket even if it is valid for that event.

Those tickets, in those particular cases, can be sold with an enormous handling fee that the consumer does not even see until they have already paid and checked out, and then it is added to the bill. So, the face value of the ticket is not necessarily the full cost. Horror stories abound that have been taken through Choice's diligent work on this issue.

There is cause for law reform that would ensure that tickets, if they are onsold, are done so in a much more transparent manner, with full details of the original conditions of the ticket and the original price of the ticket, and limits not just on what has been touted before as, say, 10 per cent of an increase on the face value of a ticket, but making sure that the face value of the ticket is up there right in front of the consumer when they make that purchase. It would ensure also that they are not whacked with additional handling fees, which are a real sneaky and backdoor way of trapping the consumer. That consumer is usually a fan who has missed out because the tickets have sold out, and they have sold out because those who profit from ticket scalping in this era use things called 'bots'.

There is also a call to ban the bots, and I would hope that this government will see fit that we do need fit for purpose legislation, not just to restrict those dodgy practices around slugging a fan extra amounts on top of the face value of a ticket, but to ban those bots that the shonky ticket scalpers use to snap up all the tickets online. Those shonky practices of using bots are going to be addressed by the New South Wales government.

This is no surprise, because there was, just over a week ago, a meeting of state and territory ministers, who agreed to ban the bots, and New South Wales has announced that they will take the lead in that. In newspaper and media reports of that very welcome announcement by New South Wales, I would note that it was said to be a world first. That is actually not the case. Banning the bots has been done in America, and certainly one needs to look no further than the information provided by Live Performance Australia, which is also campaigning very strongly on this issue, to see that not only has it been done but that it can be done. This place should be looking at taking ticket scalping seriously and doing so.

What do we have from our minister with carriage of the piece of legislation that this government has deemed fit to address ticket scalping? On 30 August, we had minister Bignell arriving off a plane to do a FIVEaa radio interview, getting on the phone to Dave Penberthy and Will Gooding and being faced with questions around what he would do to ensure that the Geelong Cats game that was scheduled for 22 September would actually have protections against ticket scalping.

Why did they raise this? They raised this because those tickets were being put up for sale online at exorbitant rates, and they raised it because the tickets had largely sold out. At first, minister Bignell, in his first interviews on this, on both ABC Radio Adelaide that morning and then later on FIVEaa, stated that ticket scalping was not a problem because everyone could get a ticket if they really wanted to. This is, of course, from a minister who I suspect has not bought a ticket for himself in a very long time.

When it was pointed out to him that the only tickets left were single, restricted view tickets—and indeed, not tickets you could give your child because you could not get double seats together at all in the stadium—he retracted a bit and recanted slightly. Then he said, 'Oh well, I'll take it a little bit more seriously,' and he announced that he would enact the major events provisions to protect that particular game against ticket scalping. That was on 30 August.

Literally later that day, tickets were still for sale online. The Advertiser, through the journalist Adam Langenberg, reported that he had contacted people who were selling tickets on Gumtree at exorbitantly inflated prices. Those people had said to that journalist, 'Well, there is nothing you can do about it because it hasn't been declared a major event, so I am completely within my rights to have these tickets online for sale at a huge mark-up.' That ticket scalper was correct: they were completely within their legal rights to do so. Of course, minister Bignell had not enacted the major events provisions and declared that game a major event.

The game was on a Thursday night. We waited and waited for a gazetting under minister Bignell. In the media coverage that then resulted there was urging from the minister to report any examples of ticket scalping to Consumer and Business Services (CBS). So, my office did that: we emailed our concerns about identified examples of ticket scalping for that game. We sent through the first of those examples on 19 September with regard to the Adelaide versus Geelong preliminary final. We noted that those two tickets—there were two tickets on eBay in this sale—were being offered at $650. The face value of those tickets was $126 each. Therefore, it was $256 plus the booking fee, and the scalper was pocketing around $400, while fans missed out.

That was forwarded to CBS on 19 September. As I say, the game was on 22 September. There was no response to that email of complaint by 22 September. When there finally was a response, it arrived on 28 September, about nine days after the original complaint had been made. The response stated:

Thank you for contacting Consumer and Business Services. It is advisable in this case that you contact South Australian Tourism Commission (SATC) on 8463 4500 to further discuss about ticket scalping as it relates to Major Events Act 2013, which is administers [sic] by SATC.

Kind regards…

Advice and Conciliation Officer

When we raised that not only lacklustre but completely inadequate response with the journalist from The Advertiser—who had been outside the game and had seen people selling tickets completely contrary to the declaration that that game was protected against ticket scalping under the Major Events Act—he got a response from the minister's office. The response stated:

This complaint was not handled in accordance with our procedure for responding to calls relating to ticket scalping.

If a complaint about scalping is made to CBS, staff are expected to seek further information on the matter to assess whether further action is needed.

Staff dealing with consumer complaints will be reminded of this procedure, and CBS will endeavour to make contact with this complainant to get more information.

That response was sent on 15 October.

Firstly, the complainant has yet to receive a call or an email from CBS with regards to the original complaint, made, as I say on 19 September, about a game on 26 September, and which they were told to go to the Tourism Commission about on 28 September. It is now, of course, well into October. That complainant has not got that follow-up call to let them know that they were not meant to contact the Tourism Commission. We made another complaint that same day, on 19 September. We are still waiting for any response at all to that particular one. That particular one did not deal with an eBay situation. It dealt with a Viagogo situation.

In the meantime, of course, what we have seen is that on 26 September—and let us point out that the game was on 22 September—in the other place the Independent member for Florey raised a concern with the Attorney with regard to ticket scalping. She asked two questions in question time on that day. She was referred by the Attorney to take any complaints to the police. Now, I am not sure if the police have carriage of the Major Events Act or why the Attorney was advising her to take any complaints to the police, but I certainly note that in his response he stated:

We do not have complaints, at least as far as I am aware, anywhere in government—

Now, the complaints I made—two of them, one responded to incorrectly, one responded to not at all—were made well before 26 September, but the Attorney had no knowledge, and he continued both in the chamber and in the media to refer people to report complaints to the police.

What does happen when you report a complaint to the police? Well, we followed that up, as I am sure members of the council would be unsurprised to hear. When we contacted the police—and I am just looking for the date we did that, but rest assured it was before 15 October—we were referred by SAPOL and put on hold for a good 10 minutes or so, and they came back and they said that they were not sure what to do with our complaint and perhaps we had better wander in to a station.

Now, I do not really want to waste police time with reports about ticket scalping that are meant to be handled by Consumer and Business Services, so I did not wander into a police station with my complaint about that ticket that, as I say, was marked up by over $400 on the original face value, that was clearly rorting the system and contrary to the Major Events Act and in relation to which the report and complaint about it was not taken seriously by the bureaucracy. I did not want to complain to the police about that.

What I do want is an act that works. I also wonder when we are going to get the second response to our complaint about the Viagogo sales, because we are still waiting for that one. We are still waiting for CBS to contact us and correct the record and say that we were not meant to take our complaint to the Tourism Commission and actually we are still waiting for an act that works.

When it comes to the Major Events Act, until this most recent pressure, put on minister Bignell, to declare a major event for those particular finals football games, I would note that there was only 14 events in total where a major event was declared from the beginning of the operations of that act until earlier this year, and only two of those were for what you would call live performance. The rest were all cricket, soccer, cycling and other sports related events. Two gigs, two concert performances—those being Rolling Stones mark 1 and 2 and AC/DC—are the only times that protections against ticket scalping have been given to fans who wish to see live performances, great music, world-class music in this state.

In fact we know that the majority of ticket scalping happens around the music industry. We know that the music industry and particularly Live Performance Australia are begging for state and territory governments to act on this issue. I think at the moment we are seeing that that action is pretty underwhelming.

When I refer to that major event declaration for the Rolling Stones, the first time it was declared was, of course, the concert in March 2014 but that was cancelled and postponed. We then had over six months to get it right—but what happened? Again, it was declared a major event. I note that part of the major event process is that there is a gazetted area around the Adelaide Oval that gives protection from any ticket sales whatsoever within that geographical zone. That geographical zone ends at War Memorial Drive, some 50 metres from the front gates of Adelaide Oval, where one can walk across the road into the ANZAC Peace Park and sell tickets there. It is not rocket science. It is clearly not fit for purpose.

Online, the protections, of course, are meant to exist where Consumer and Business Services will investigate complaints around ticket scalping. However, media reports at the time—and I hope the government can correct me—by the ABC noted that the Consumer Affairs Commissioner was not given powers under the act to act on those reports of ticket scalping, indeed, until mere days before the second concert.

As I say, we had six months to get it right and a few days out, suddenly the commissioner had some empowerment but certainly no prosecutions were made of scalping tickets. I can tell you that that night, walking to the Rolling Stones across the bridge, there were people scalping tickets. I saw it with my own eyes. Unfortunately, nobody from the bureaucracy or, in this case, SAPOL, did anything about it.

This is a serious problem. It is a consumer issue. Increasingly, consumers are getting ripped off and the people who are getting ripped off are those who love the performances that they want to go and see. That damages the industry and that is why this industry is crying out for protections. That is why acts like Midnight Oil who, I note, are not declared a major event under this act, are crying out for protections against ticket scalping. That is why festivals such as Day on the Green are crying out for protections against ticket scalping. Until this government takes ticket scalping seriously and looks to the UK, US and now soon to be New South Wales legislation and implements something that is fit for purpose, we are letting those fans down and we are letting those performers down, and we are letting the industry down.

With those few words, the Greens will be making this an election issue. We believe that consumers, particularly fans, have the right to be not ripped off. We believe performers, who put so much into their craft, who are there for their art should not have somebody making a profit from their talent and from their hard work. These people are opportunistic. They do not contribute to the industry. They do not provide opportunity. Legitimate platforms for people to onsell, knowing that they are getting a product that is not going to see them turn up to the door of the gig; for example, as David Penberthy on FIVEaa said when he turned up to HQ for Public Enemy, he had a false ticket.

Fans want to know that they are going to get what they paid for. At the moment they are not, and Choice has uncovered the depth of how many times people are getting ripped off. Performers deserve to get the rewards of their hard work and the industry deserves our protection as parliamentarians. With those few words, I commend the motion.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. S.G. Wade.