MS CHESTER: Good morning, Paul. Once you have made yourself comfortable if you wouldn’t mind just stating your name, the organisation you represent for the purposes of the transcript recording, and then if you’d like to make some brief opening remarks. MR NOONAN: Sure, thank you. MS CHESTER: And you for your submissions. MR NOONAN: Thanks. So my name is Paul Noonan. I am on the board of Music Australia and I am appearing in that capacity as a board member. Music Australia, as you said, made a submission and so I’d like to speak around that as much as to it, briefly. So we are grateful that we’ve got this opportunity to speak to you. Music Australia is the peak music organisation representing the Australian music community. We are Australia’s representative to the International Music Council which is based at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. We are a 50 member national umbrella body and our membership and activities cover education in the community and the professional industry. We deliver campaigns, information, resources, sector networking, community engagement, a national school music participation program called Music Count Us In, and demonstration projects and we also engage in advocacy. A number of our members have made separate submissions to this inquiry, both in the initial phase and in response to the draft report. My expertise, and the reason I’m on the board, is that I am a copyright lawyer or intellectual property lawyer and also a professional musician, and was a professional musician for my entire income for a number of years up until the mid-90s when I graduated from Monash with Law. I just mention that because I think that gives me some insights into the issues that you are examining that some other people may not have. We really welcome this debate. We think it’s important and we also want to be clear in acknowledging the role that the Commission and its predecessor has had in developing and shaping the modern Australian economy. But - and there is a but, some significant buts - we’ve got some deep reservations about a number of the key recommendations that you would have seen from the submission. And I would just like to briefly touch on some of those now. The finding that the term of copyright should be between 15 and 25 years not surprisingly has caused a lot of agitation in sectors of our membership - I would say within the majority of them. We think we have given some compelling, if anecdotal, examples in our submission that demonstrate that we don’t think that the evidence that you considered
MS CHESTER: Good morning, Paul. Once you have made yourself comfortable if you wouldn’t mind just stating your name, the organisation you represent for the purposes of the transcript recording, and then if you’d like to make some brief opening remarks. MR NOONAN: Sure, thank you. MS CHESTER: And you for your submissions. MR NOONAN: Thanks. So my name is Paul Noonan. I am on the board of Music Australia and I am appearing in that capacity as a board member. Music Australia, as you said, made a submission and so I’d like to speak around that as much as to it, briefly. So we are grateful that we’ve got this opportunity to speak to you. Music Australia is the peak music organisation representing the Australian music community. We are Australia’s representative to the International Music Council which is based at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. We are a 50 member national umbrella body and our membership and activities cover education in the community and the professional industry. We deliver campaigns, information, resources, sector networking, community engagement, a national school music participation program called Music Count Us In, and demonstration projects and we also engage in advocacy. A number of our members have made separate submissions to this inquiry, both in the initial phase and in response to the draft report. My expertise, and the reason I’m on the board, is that I am a copyright lawyer or intellectual property lawyer and also a professional musician, and was a professional musician for my entire income for a number of years up until the mid-90s when I graduated from Monash with Law. I just mention that because I think that gives me some insights into the issues that you are examining that some other people may not have. We really welcome this debate. We think it’s important and we also want to be clear in acknowledging the role that the Commission and its predecessor has had in developing and shaping the modern Australian economy. But - and there is a but, some significant buts - we’ve got some deep reservations about a number of the key recommendations that you would have seen from the submission. And I would just like to briefly touch on some of those now. The finding that the term of copyright should be between 15 and 25 years not surprisingly has caused a lot of agitation in sectors of our membership - I would say within the majority of them. We think we have given some compelling, if anecdotal, examples in our submission that demonstrate that we don’t think that the evidence that you considered
20160623-melbourne-intellectual-property.docx