Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026

Senator HENDERSON (Victoria) (19:53): I rise to speak on the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026. The coalition strongly supports protecting the commercial rights, images and indicia associated with major sporting events, but those protections already exist. This bill is about something very different.

It takes another decision out of the hands of parliament and puts it into the hands of a minister—in this case, the Minister for Sport and the Minister for Communications, Ms Wells. Since 2014, major sporting events have been recognised through primary legislation. This bill would allow the minister to recognise them through delegated legislation instead.

Labor calls that efficiency, but administrative convenience is no justification for diminishing parliamentary scrutiny and transparency. Increasingly, I have to say, this is becoming a hallmark of the Albanese government—more power for ministers, less scrutiny by the parliament. The fundamental problem with this bill is that the government has not identified a problem which needs fixing.

There is no evidence that the existing process has prevented Australia from protecting the commercial rights associated with major sporting events. There is no legislative logjam. There is no demonstrated urgency.

According to the departmental briefing provided to the coalition, this change was initiated by the minister, not by sporting organisations or other stakeholders. So why should the parliament give up its existing role? The government's answer appears to be 'convenience'.

It says this will save parliamentary time and allow decisions to be made more quickly. Yet major international sporting events are planned years in advance. The 2020 and 2022 T20 World Cups and the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup were all successfully recognised through amendments to the act—so the existing process works well.

If we look ahead to major sporting events—the 2027 Men's Rugby World Cup, the 2028 cricket world cup and the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games—we've got plenty of warning that these events will be held, and there is no suggestion that the parliament cannot find the time to properly legislate and subject the legislation to appropriate scrutiny. There is a very important principle at stake: primary legislation requires the government to come into the parliament, explain what it is proposing and subject that decision to parliamentary debate and scrutiny.

Under this bill, the minister makes the decision and parliament sees it afterwards through delegated legislation, which is not good enough. We have seen this from the Minister for Sport and the Minister for Communications, with Labor's disastrous Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill. The bill sought to hand extraordinary powers to the communications minister, including the personal power to direct the regulator to investigate particular types of misinformation and the power to exempt particular digital platforms from the scheme.

The coalition, along with many others, fought that bill, and Labor was ultimately forced to abandon it. The same thing is happening with the proposed digital duty of care, where the government, based on what we have read, is proposing to give the minister wide-ranging and extraordinary powers to make regulations governing categories of online harm without any scrutiny of the parliament.

That is just unacceptable. Significant policy decisions must be made transparently and subjected to the scrutiny of parliament, not progressively transferred to ministers because it's quicker or more convenient. Very significantly, the minister has failed to explain why the existing process is inadequate.

She has not demonstrated any urgency and she has not demonstrated why the parliament should give up and surrender another important decision to the executive. This bill is a solution in search of a problem, and the price of that solution is less transparency and more ministerial power. The coalition strongly supports protecting the intellectual property associated with Australia's major sporting events, but will not support administrative convenience being used as an excuse to diminish transparency, accountability and parliamentary scrutiny.

For those reasons, the coalition will oppose the bill.