The Copyright Agency, which collects fees on behalf of Australian content creators, runs something of a foregone conclusion vote every three years to appoint a board director to represent authors.
However, this time the agency will soon announce an unusual number of candidates to put before author members of the Copyright Agency.
They are: Eugen Bacon (fiction); Anthony Klan (journalism); Julia Lawrinson (fiction); Gaby Naher (non-fiction, fiction, literary agent); James Phelan (fiction); Matthew Ricketson (journalism).
The vote in the past has been a sham. Everyone knew who was going to win because the union for journalists, the MEAA (Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance), backed its own candidate, even if that meant urging members to vote against other union members.
The backing of the MEAA ensures that a candidate will win because journalists are the majority of author members at the Copyright Agency.
This time, however, the union has said: “MEAA will not be endorsing any particular candidate in that election.”
Who cares? Those who get fees, via the Copyright Agency, when others use their works.
The Copyright Agency, established 50 years ago by authors who wanted to be compensated for the copying of their works at universities, at last report paid out $143.4 million a year to creators and their owners of content, publishers.
The membership base has since grown to include publishers (books and periodicals) and visual artists (photographers and artists).
The money is important to publishers whose advertising revenue base is shrinking and to authors struggling to keep the bank balance above the red line.
Nominations for author member candidates closed August 16 but the Copyright Agency website still doesn't give a date for the election, nor does it reveal the nominated candidates. A vote is usually held before the November AGM.
Over the years, a vote wasn’t even needed to appoint an author director. The MEAA endorsed candidate went unopposed.
The other big author member organisation, the Australian Society of Authors, hasn’t for many years endorsed its own candidate. The society already has the ability to nominate two directors to the board of the Copyright Agency and some felt that this was enough influence.
Three years ago, the investigative journalist Adele Ferguson, with the backing of the MEAA, was voted in for a third term on the Copyright Agency board.
However, soon after that she was appointed chair of the Walkley Foundation, which runs the journalism awards of the same name. She stepped down from the Copyright Agency due to ”increasing work commitments”.
The Copyright Agency board, rather than appointing the next candidate with the most votes after Ferguson -- journalist Anthony Klan -- went with someone who had strong links to the union, Matthew Ricketson.
With six candidates, the upcoming vote is anyone's game and the winner may do so with a small margin of votes.
Among them are some who might plumb different wells of support among Copyright Agency members.
Eugen Bacon, with an African heritage, is a leading figure among speculative fiction writers in Australia. She was nominated for the board by me (Chris Pash) and by Anne Maria Nicholson, both members of the MEAA and former directors of the Copyright Agency and of the Australian Society of Authors.
Perth-based Julia Lawrinson is popular and prominent among those who write for children and young adults, a strong group within the author community.
Ricketson, an journalist academic, and something of a controversial figure among the journalist community for his involvement in the 2012 Finkelstein inquiry into the media and media regulation, faces his first vote, having walked into the role vote a vote of the board of directors.
He has previously been backed by the MEAA, as a representative on the Press Council, a body the union is due to withdraw from next year.
His appointment was criticised because of the Finkelstein report which recommended some form of statutory regulation of news media, then seen as the government taking control of journalism.
Klan is campaigning on a platform to elect him so he can investigate why payments to writers have been falling. “Something major has happened,” he writes in his candidate statement. “I’m determined to find out what — and to get funds flowing again. Times are hard enough already in our sector.”
The elections at the Copyright Agency are usually straightforward, with electronic voting.
However, staff have in the past taken to editing candidate written statements without first checking the candidate, and with allowing some candidates to submit more than the allowed wordage.
This time the six candidates all have a word count under 300.
DISCLOSURE: Chris Pash was a board director of the Copyright Agency (2016-2019) and is a former board director and chair of the Australian Society of Authors (2010-2020).
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