Australia to introduce Resale Royalty

Australia will pass legislation before the end of the year introducing a resale royalty right scheme for Australia's visual artists. It is expected to take effect from 1 July 2009.

The scheme applies to:

• visual artists, who will receive a mandatory five per cent of the resale price of their work, when it sells for $1000 or more.
• works by living artists and for a period of 70 years after an artist’s death
• original works of graphic or plastic art, such as a painting, a collage, a drawing, a print, a sculpture, a ceramic, an item of glassware or a photograph
• resales where the seller acquires a work after the resale royalty legislation takes effect.

Dept for the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (obligatory, if naive, what the? exclamation) info

Response from the (bright-eyed, bushy-tailed) Nicholas Forrest

Artists apparently not all that stoked - SMH