The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (‘JSCOT’) is currently doing an inquiry into the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for People who are Blind, Visually Impaired or otherwise Print Disabled.
The text and national interest assessment (‘NIA’) are available here. When the Attorney-General’s Department (‘AGD’) conducted a consultation on the best approach for implementation, we made a submission, available here (PDF).
I’m reading through the Treaty and NIA. The Government is in favour of ratification of the Treaty, which according to the NIA requires no changes to domestic legislation. This doesn’t sit right with me because our copyright laws are not currently known to be very ‘blind-friendly’. The Government is also stalling on implementation of two reviews (ALRC Report 122 and IT Pricing Inquiry Report) which would help the print disabled in Australia.
If people would like to help out with the submission, the read and edit Overleaf project is here (note: uses LaTeX, but don’t be intimidated, it’s easy!). A pad for rough working and notes is here.