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The shadow minister for the arts, Angie Bell, who was a professional musician for 35 years, has said strong copyright protections are essential to ensure Australian creators were “respected, rewarded and able to continue to produce world-class work”. She said:

double quotation mark If AI companies want to use Australian creative work, they should do what everyone else does: ask permission and pay for it. That’s how copyright works, and that’s how it should stay.

Australian creativity is one of our greatest national assets – not a free resource for multinational tech companies. The Coalition will always back the right of artists to control their work and be fairly compensated when others profit from it.

This is about consent, fairness and respect for Australian creativity.

Guardian Australia is among the media companies supporting the campaign to safeguard copyright laws.