NAVA NEWS

This week the ASV received an email from NAVA regarding the resale royalty rights legislation:
Resale Royalty – Government Ticks Empty Box
The Australian art community could not be more disappointed in the artists’ resale royalty bill which passed through parliament today.
Tamara Winikoff, Executive Director of the Australian visual arts peak body, the National Association for the Visual Arts, said, “This legislation alienates all sides of the visual arts sector. It is an election promise gone horribly wrong.”
“Especially in the current economic downturn, this could have provided urgently needed help to some of Australia’s lowest income earners. This compromised scheme will take about 20 terms of government before it is fully functional,” Winikoff continued. “According to art industry studies, most of today’s artists, especially Aboriginal artists, will see no benefit within their lifetime and will not enjoy the dignity of earning income from the increasing value of their art work.”
The model contained in the Government’s Bill will see the payment of the royalty to artists delayed until the second sale of their artwork after the commencement of the scheme. Art industry studies of auction house sales showed that of the artworks which were sold in 1998, only 6% had resold ten years later. This gives an indication of the length of time most artists will have to wait to see any benefit.
Over the same period, in the fully functioning scheme for which artists have been impatiently waiting, $35.3 million would have been paid on 43.000 art works as opposed to the Government’s scheme which would have delivered about 1/9th of this amount on less than 4,000 artworks.
In addition, this scheme will be very complex to administer and is highly unlikely to secure reciprocal rights from overseas sales of Australian artists’ work. This means again that artists are being denied another potential source of income.
“I’m sure Government had good intentions but there is nothing more disappointing that raising people’s expectations, then letting them down. From the Government’s election promise, artists expected a resale royalty that applied immediately to all resales of works in copyright. What they’ve been delivered is a wishful gaze into the distant future,” Winikoff said.
Some of the problems which have dogged the Government’s resale royalty right bill were highlighted in the ten recommendations made by the House Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment, and the Arts’ Inquiry into the Resale Royalty Right for Visual Artists Bill 2008. However, the most problematic parts of the bill have not been changed.