Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This evening I want to speak in this grievance debate in relation to the very complex issue of parallel importation. The House will be aware that there is much debate in the community regarding this issue, and although the campaign being run in favour of lifting restrictions on parallel importation focuses solely on cheaper books, the reality is that this is a complicated issue which needs to go beyond primarily the notion of cheap books. We must recognise that this complex issue intersperses all the factors which go into building Australia’s book industry and as such this debate needs, as I said, to go beyond sole reference to price without considering all the other factors involved.

The issue of parallel importation has been the subject of many reviews and inquiries which were put forward by the previous government. The House will recall that attempts to lift restrictions on parallel imports were rejected in the Senate by the then opposition. In November 2008, the then Minister for Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs requested that the Productivity Commission examine the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968 that restricts the parallel importation of books into Australia. Interestingly enough, the Productivity Commission’s reports concluded, amongst other things, that parallel importation restrictions do not differentiate between books of what we might consider to be of high and low cultural value. This point appears to me to be very significant and raises an important question: to what measures do we as a society wish to surrender the power of assessing the cultural value of our local authors? I, for one, do not want to see the contribution of a significant portion of the domestic artistic community subject to the financial sanctions of the British and US publishing markets.

The only certainty in removing restrictions on the parallel importation of books is that independent authors, sectors of the education market, as well as certain retailers, will no longer be able to compete with big retailers. The proposed reforms fail to take into account that there is no guarantee that the proposed cost saving measures by big retailers would in fact be passed on to the consumer. Considering that all major English language markets also have parallel import restrictions in place, Australian authors will have to carry the burden of free-market ideology on their own. Such measures will be without any reciprocity from the markets in which Australian authors and publishers have to compete and it is on this point that the Australian public, as well as the association of authors, have a strong moral case for keeping the restrictions in place. As Text Publishing recently reported to the Intellectual Property and Competition Review Committee:

The current regime provides an incentive for internationally focused Australian publishers to price their editions competitively, while also providing them with the same protection of territorial copyright that British and American publishers have.

It is clear that the objective of ensuring a healthy, vibrant and cosmopolitan Australian book industry can only be achieved by the regulative practices currently in place. The removal of restrictions on parallel imports would serve to stifle the competitive nature of our local book industry as well as undermine the marketing and sales efforts of independent booksellers. As the Australian Copyright Council recently told the IPCR Committee:

The effect of imported copies on the Australian rights owners is [that] ... other people unfairly benefit from the copyright owner’s investment in the work, and the copyright owner’s return from that investment is reduced.

Many authors have already spoken publicly against the findings of the Productivity Commission’s report. I want to raise here today in particular the concerns of one prominent local author, Mr Shane Maloney, the creator of the very popular Murray Whelan series, who has directly expressed his concerns to me. Shane points to the Productivity Commission’s report recommendations which acknowledge that these changes are going to have an adverse effect on Australian authors and go as far as recommending that ‘financial assistance for encouraging Australian writing and publishing should be received immediately ... and that that new arrangement should be reviewed after 5 years’. For Shane Maloney and others like him, the Productivity Commission’s proposed solution to the ‘suffering’ it admits will result is to provide writers with a grant. What this suggests is that it wants the taxpayer to repair the damage it will inflict. Writers who are currently commercially viable will go from being self-sufficient to be forced to beg for government handouts.

Authors such as Shane Maloney refute the argument put forward by both the Coalition for Cheaper Books and the Productivity Commission that suggest that lowering the cost of books will have a positive effect on levels of literacy. Shane stated:

... to claim that cheaper books will increase literacy is like saying that the cure for obesity is cheaper shoes.

As such, Shane’s position on the report is simple and clear: ‘... if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ We need to understand that financial regulation in the area of book publishing, printing and sales is not just about the off-the-shelf cost of books. We have a well-established and prolific book culture and tradition in this country that ensures that the public can and does receive good deals on the price of books.

We are also grappling with the future of our printing and publishing industries. It is in this context that I am inclined to reject recommendations that call for the lifting of restrictions on parallel importations. It is perfectly understandable that the public would like to see the cost of books come down. What is certain is that if this issue is viewed solely through the myopic lenses of the price of books, this debate will not produce an outcome we can all be satisfied with.

Throughout this debate I hope that we can continue to remind ourselves of the equally important imperative of sustaining and fostering both our established and developing community of authors and the need to maintain our domestic capacity to publish and print their work. The imperatives surrounding this issue take on an increased significance when we remind ourselves of the need to foster and develop the work that captures the rich and colourful palette of the Australian lexicon. This cultural heritage must continue to be represented in an unaltered form, unaffected by the competing objectives of foreign based publishers and printers.

A practical example to highlight what has just been said is the experience that Shane Maloney had in seeing his work being reprinted in the US and then regurgitated to Australian bookstores. An edition of his book mistakenly distributed in Australia contained dialogue altered to cater to an American market. I ask you, Mr Deputy Speaker, are these the cheaper books that we would like to see fill our shelves?

We must also remind ourselves that ensuring the sustainability of our local publishers and printers is not just a theoretical debate about the possible futures of the Australian literary landscape. It is as much a debate about the livelihood of Australians. There are over 3,000 people working in the printing industry across Australia. This is a healthy and sustainable industry. The implementation of the commission’s recommendations will threaten this industry and all its accomplishments along with the livelihood of its workers. These are not abstract notions of supply and demand. In looking at Melbourne alone, streets such as Brunswick Street, Fitzroy Street and Sydney Road, which is adjacent to my electorate of Calwell, are areas which are renowned for their vibrancy and cosmopolitan nature. They have a vast array of independent booksellers that have the potential to go down the drain if we were to implement the recommendations of the report. We must not allow for the way in which books are bought and sold to become the sole domain of the major retail chains. The Productivity Commission’s report has the potential to stifle the ease of access to various forms of books written for Australians by Australian authors.

As chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Innovation, I understand that innovation is a cornerstone for future economic growth. The productivity and innovation of Australia’s publishing industry is one which is reliant upon the way in which policy is formulated. In today’s knowledge based economy I do not believe the focus should be primarily on capital accumulation for large corporations, but should instead be focused on innovation as the main driver of productivity. Therefore in an industry where one of the main drivers of growth is creativity, the existing territorial copyright laws have fostered an environment of innovation. In doing so these laws have allowed both authors and publishers to withstand the enormous pressures that would otherwise have existed in a market in which 40 per cent is controlled by large retailers. The notion of market flexibility is the cornerstone of attempts to lift the parallel importation restrictions. It is a notion in which cultural progress is viewed as subordinate to what some might think to be the highest arbiter of progress: the profit motive.

We must not allow for protections afforded to Australia’s book industry by territorial copyright laws to be undermined by ideology. It puts at risk the economic and cultural viability of the entire industry as well as placing a stranglehold on the creativity of our independent authors and publishers. The response to this issue needs to occur outside this framework. Australian authors and publishers will find that their artistic expression is stifled by the enormous weight of multinationals where competition overrides creativity. If we choose to end parallel import protections we will say to our young and aspiring authors that creativity and ideas do not begin at home.

Finally, government should be focused on managing globalisation rather than allowing globalisation to manage the way in which the Australian literary narrative develops. We have an obligation to help keep Australian books in the marketplace and avoid a perilous future for Australian culture and education.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for the grievance debate has expired. The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 192B. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.