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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-10-18 Daily Xml
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Question Time

Ticket Scalping

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:53): My question is to the Attorney-General. What work has been done or what measures can be undertaken to prevent ticket scalping and break the business models of those involved in purchasing quantities of tickets for resale rather than personal use and those involved in selling fraudulent tickets?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (14:54): Can I thank the honourable member for her question and her ongoing interest in this very important topic. In fact, as members may or may not be aware, the member for Florey has been very much at the forefront of raising questions about this with both myself and my colleague, the minister for sport and tourism. In fact, as recently as today, we had further conversations about this very matter.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The house is lapsing into unconsciousness.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Excellent! Let's just talk about what we have now and let's talk about where we might go. What we have now is an arrangement, which was primarily introduced, as I know that my ministerial colleague knows, I think at the insistence of Cricket Australia, with a view to preventing a very unsatisfactory practice called ambush marketing, which involves somebody who's putting a lot of investment, time and money into putting on an event having their event basically stolen from underneath them by other people who just bob up and make money out of their efforts. Of course, that is undesirable and we have legislation that deals with that.

The ambush marketing issue is one that is clearly a matter that is dealt with by tourism or sport because they have some inkling as to which events are likely to be events where this is a problem because the sponsors of the events come to them. We have three other problems which are worth mentioning. These are the three problems that the member for Florey spoke about in her question. The three problems are basically these: we are dealing here with offshore operators, who in many cases are dodgy characters, who are putting up for sale tickets which actually don't exist. These people are nothing more than crooks.

The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell: Shonks.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Shonks, fraudsters.

Mr Knoll: Shysters.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Shysters, yes, I'll accept that. So what these people are doing is actually sucking people in to buying worthless goods which they then attempt to pass off to the hapless purchaser, and the hapless purchaser bobs up at the event and meets with the uncomfortable reality that they don't actually have a ticket for the event.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Mr Speaker, I know you're interested in the answer to this question.

The SPEAKER: And that is all that matters.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: And that is all that matters, indeed. I'll address myself to the Speaker because I know he's interested. Mr Speaker, the second group of people that we are very concerned about are people who are honest citizens who, for some reason beyond their control, can't go to an event. Those people should be allowed to sell their tickets on to other people without us getting heavy-handed about those matters. Then, the last group are the speculators, who go in and find a very, very popular event like Dire Straits or something, where it's packed out, and rush in and buy all the tickets up. What we are going to do is I've asked business—

The SPEAKER: The time has expired. A supplementary, member for Florey.

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