Full text of the opening speech by CISAC Board Chair and APRA AMCOS CEO, Dean Ormston,at the CISAC General Assembly 2026

The following is the full text of the speech delivered by CISAC Board Chair and APRA AMCOS CEO Dean Ormston during CISAC's Centenary General Assembly in Paris in 2026.

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Good morning everyone.

Bienvenue à tous, chers collègues et amis

C'est un vrai plaisir d'être ici à Paris

En tant que président, j'ai le privilège de vous souhaiter la bienvenue - à CISAC cent.

Bon, ça suffit pour le français de la part d'un Australien!

Maintenant, je vais parler Australien!

Björn said that human creativity is not just expression. It is testimony. A life lived.

I want to stay with that theme.

Earlier this year, the CISAC board met in Sydney. At our reception event with music, arts and government leaders from across Australia and New Zealand, a local Indigenous Elder stood and welcomed us to country, to the land we were
standing on.

In Australia, this is a living custom.

First Nations peoples have maintained a continuous connection to country for more than 60,000 years - through songlines, storytelling, ceremony and art.

When an Elder welcomes you to their land, they are not just performing a formality. They are reminding everyone present that this place carries memory.

That the stories embedded in the land, and the songs that map it, belong to a community, to a living culture.

Because Björn is right. Creativity is testimony.

In First Nations culture, the song is not just the artist's; it is the community's. The story is not just personal, it is ancestral.
The creativity is inseparable from the people and the land.

And that creativity is not preserved behind glass. It is alive. It is in the music being made right now, with the artists streamed to global audiences and headlining festivals.

But the same platforms and AI systems that threaten every creator in this room are reaching into that living tradition too.
What is at stake for Indigenous creators is not just heritage. It is the present…and it is the future.

As we gather today to mark CISAC's 100th anniversary, that Welcome to Country stays with me, because it says something about what we all stand for.

We are 227 author societies from 111 countries. We speak different languages, represent different art forms, operate under different legal traditions. But we share a common conviction: that the creativity of human beings, wherever they are from, whatever form it takes, must be protected, valued, and respected.

And right now, that conviction has never been more urgently needed.

Creativity is what makes us human.

We all experience it, participate in it, and benefit from it every day.

Our priority is the creator, and the human expression of that creativity. The framework that supports it, that recognises its personal and collective social, cultural and economic value.

Never has it been more important to stand together in unity, with commitment, and singularity of purpose to protect the rights of creators.

CISAC represents more than five million songwriters, composers, authors, visual artists, screenwriters and directors.

That is the scale of what we speak for. That is the scale of what is at stake.

THE CHALLENGE

Every time a new industry has been built on creative work, the law recognised that creators are entitled to be paid. The technology changed. But the principle did not.

Whether broadcast over the airwaves, downloaded from the internet, streamed through a phone, or copied into an AI system, the premise is the same. Creators must be paid for the use of their work.

That has always been the destination. And it must be the destination now.

As global Big Tech mines the world's creative output and reduces the value of human expression to ones and zeros, we must be clear and unified in our responsibility to fight for what creators are owed. That is what we have always done. And it is what we will continue to do.

And we have seen what is possible.

The Australian government's recent rejection of a text and data mining exception for AI is proof that when the creative community speaks with one voice, governments listen.

We are uniquely placed to aggregate the voice of the world's creators and to make clear to every government that creativity must be valued, and creators must be paid.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

The urgency of that fight should not obscure what I genuinely believe: that the future is positive, with enormous opportunity for collective management, if we are willing to act.

The challenges are real, in an increasingly complex political, market and operational context. But the answer to complexity is cooperation.

The unifying offering of this community, is service. Human-led, commercially focused and smart tech enabled.

Collaboration and partnership can deliver scale and efficiency, world's best service to creators, rightsholders and licensees, and enable us to say to any creator member, anywhere in the world: we've got your back…we protect and defend your rights…we fight for the value of your work, locally and globally. The collective community protects and delivers.

The goodwill and spirit of those who built this community over 100 years.. lives on in everyone in this room.

Later today, we will invite the global creative community to stand together and call on governments of the world and decision makers to uphold creators' rights.

The Paris Commitment, adopted here today, is our promise to the future generations of human creators.

And as a demonstration of the Paris Commitment, today we raise our global voice in support of the Darcos Bill and call on France to adopt this legislation without delay - introducing a presumption of use of creative content by AI platforms.

The passing of this French legislation will have enormous impact globally in holding AI platforms to account.

One hundred years ago, our predecessors gathered in this city and made a promise.

Today, we renew it. We move, and we act decisively in supporting the global creative community.

Creativity is testimony. It is a life lived. It is country, community and the human spirit, expressed through every language, every culture, every generation.

CLOSING

I want to acknowledge Gadi and the entire CISAC Secretariat for putting on this General Assembly, and for everything they do in service of the collective management community and the creators we all represent.

A heart felt thank you to Björn our tireless, universally loved and respected advocate and beacon of light for the world's creators.

And thank you to our Vice Presidents.

Thank you all for being here today to celebrate this incredible milestone event

Happy 100th CISAC! Here's to our collective future!