Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026
Mr MATT SMITH (Leichhardt) (17:02): I rise to support the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026. We'll do the legislative stuff first. This bill modernises the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Act 2014 to ensure it remains fit for purpose.
It introduces a flexible, rule based framework to support future events, reduces the need for repeated legislative amendments and supports Australia's commitments to major international sporting events. It enables protections for the Rugby Union World Cup in 2027 and the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games; protects sponsors and commercial partners from ambush marketing; and maintains appropriate safeguards, including clear statutory criteria for ministerial declarations, parliamentary oversight and exemptions for legitimate use.
It's protecting IP. This is not going to come as a surprise to anybody, but I love sport and I love these— Mr McCormack: You're good at sport. Mr MATT SMITH: I used to be.
Thank you. I thank the member for Riverina. I take the interjection.
I was really good—no! I love these major events—not for the tourism and not for the economic development, but because they bring so many people together, with the opportunity. So many memories are created with parents at sporting games, holding the hands of their little one, introducing them to the team that they love and feeling that emotion from the crowd.
It's something that is an integral part of the Australian culture. My favourite sport these days is not going to the NBL or the AFL or watching the Socceroos, as great as they are, on TV. It's local sport.
It's going to watch kids playing for the first time, experiencing the rush of doing well and learning through the wins and, sometimes more importantly, the losses about what it means to be a good sport, what it means to be a teammate and what it means to be together in a moment. It is such an integral part of the development of young people. Watching my daughters play netball and AFL and go to gymnastics, and watching them experience and experiment with what they can do physically, as well as the mental aspect of the game, are some of the great joys of a parent or a grandparent, an uncle, an aunt, and it is something that is inspired by these events.
My daughters weren't into gymnastics until the Olympics were on, and we were able to put it on in the house and go: 'Look, this is what you can do. You can learn to tumble, learn to flip and do all these really great things.' That's how they got their interest in it. These events are more than just the big shiny lights.
They're more than the elite athletes. It's more than the cold professionalism that you sometimes find in professional sport. Playing in the United States, I was exposed to how ruthless, brutal and cold sport can be.
Coming back to Australia after my professional career ended and getting back into grassroots sport, I was reminded of what community sport is like, what community participation is like and what events like the big ones—the Olympics, the rugby union World Cup—do to really lift people up. They get people excited to play again, to get out and kick the footy with their friends, to be the next Kieren Perkins—I'm showing my age here—or Cathy Freeman, to wear that gold medal and to feel what it must feel like to have a crowd behind you like that, and everybody does it.
Everyone's in the backyard, and they play it through their heads. They've got their imagination running wild. The amount of kids who say the name of their favourite player as they shoot a basket or as they put the Sherrin off the foot or tuck it under their arm and cross over for the tryline.
It's a part of growing up, and it's a part of being something bigger than yourself. At the last big footy game I went to, I took my daughters and my fiancee to watch Geelong versus Brisbane, and being a part of that big crowd and feeling that wave of emotion—Renee, my fiancee, is a Kiwi. Her ways are not our ways!
She very much appreciates the All Blacks. The All Blacks aren't really my thing. She came to her first AFL game and was just taken aback by the community that came with it, walking in to the MCG with 100,000 other people dressed to the nines in their Geelong gear.
There weren't as many Lions supporters that day, but it's Melbourne. We can't hold it against them. We were there to witness the mighty Lions beat Geelong and then go on to win the AFL grand final.
It'll be a core memory for my daughters, and it was a great time to spend with my fiancee. It was a great bonding experience to have that together. I look at those photos fondly, and my daughters speak about it fondly.
That's the power of these sporting events. It's bringing those families together. It's giving them those memories together.
One of the earliest memories I have is my father and grandfather taking me to watch the Ashes with Allan Border, Dean Jones and Big Merv and to sing the songs in Bay 13. That meant a lot to me, it meant a lot to my grandfather, and it meant a lot to my father to have these moments. They're not much, and maybe they didn't mean as much to my father and grandfather at the time, but those little moments that mean the world to a kid meant the world to me.
My father doesn't like cricket very much, but he took me because it was important to me, and that's something that sticks with me. I've still got the little fake autographed cricket bat in my parents house. I don't display that.
At the time I thought it was real. I was very excited to have both the Walls, Peter Taylor and everybody. It means so much.
This piece of legislation protects these games, allows the organisations that deliver them the surety that they need because, they do need to make their money back. These things cost millions and millions of dollars to put on. Turning the lights on at the MCG is a lot of power.
Making sure that they've got all of the food, all of the vendors and everything that they need to actually put something like this on and everything surrounding it, the people who are running it need to understand and know that they're going to get their return on investment and that they're going to be protected. That's what this does. It clears the way.
We don't have to go through legislation every time we get a major sporting event. I hope we get many major sporting events, because, despite saying that I wasn't really that into it, it is an economic benefit. It's massive.
At the 2032 Olympics, there are going to be some sports held in Cairns. The hero shot from Rio de Janeiro coming off from Christ the Redeemer down over Ipanema was awesome. I'd never wanted to go to Brazil, but, after seeing that, I said: 'You know what?
I should probably go to Brazil.' I did not go to Brazil, but I thought about it. We're going to show Cairns in that way—coming down over the range, the World Heritage rainforest and looking out over the beautiful Coral Sea. People can play a bit of football, the most popular sport on the planet.
Millions of people will look at that. Millions of people will see what my city has to offer and what my region has to offer and maybe they'll think: 'I'm going to swing up to Cairns, spend a bit of time and watch my football team play there. They seem to have a good time.
They beat whoever.' That's what we want. We want that knock-on effect, those economic drivers that will also come along with an event such as this. It is superb to me that moment with your parents in the stands or an uncle, older brother or older sister cheering on your team, learning what that tribalism means, to feel like you're a part of it.
How many people talk about their favourite sporting club as 'we'? They'll say, 'We won on the weekend!' I say it about the Hawthorn Hawks. Mr McCormack interjecting— Mr MATT SMITH: I haven't kicked a football in anger for years.
The last time I did, it went really, really badly. We identify with these sporting greats. We see ourselves in them because that's who we imagined we were when we were young.
That's who we thought we could be. It shows the best part of ourselves. Playing sports and growing up that way, you learn to win, to lose and to understand that it means that sometimes you've just got to do your best and, if you're not there on the day, what that means moving forward.
That's because not every day is a good day, and sport can help you learn that. These events can help people get into sport and have those experiences. Not everyone is going to be the member for Hunter, with five Olympics and multiple Commonwealth Games under his belt, as he reminds me on an almost daily basis!
Not everyone can be Johnathan Thurston. Not everyone can be Kobe Bryant. But you can play with your friends, you can have that moment with your children and you can enjoy all that sport has to offer.
So many sporting careers, be they of Olympians or backyard warriors, have started because of these major sporting events, because someone's seen something on TV and thought: 'I can be a part of it. I can emulate this. I too can be the hero that I see on TV, even if it is just for a moment.' So I commend this bill to the House.