Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to reflect today on the government’s decision to keep in place the system of territorial copyright and the parallel importation restrictions that have served Australia’s writers, readers, publishers, printers and independent booksellers so well. I commend the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy and Labor’s working party on this issue for their conduct of this matter and its outcome. As the member for Fremantle, I was happy to be one of the many people making the case to retain the existing arrangement.

Fremantle is a place that has inspired and nourished artistic production of the highest standard across the full range of the arts. It is home to many writers, including prominent authors such as Tim Winton, Joan London, Mark Greenwood and Craig Silvey and a soon to be famous author, Josh Wilson. I have spoken before in this place in praise of the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre which, as a centre dedicated to the writing and teaching of Australian kids’ literature, is one of its kind in this country. And, from its raffish heritage building on Quarry Street, Fremantle Press has been a breeding ground for important Western Australian writers for more than 30 years. It published Sally Morgan’s My Place. It published Kim Scott’s Miles Franklin winning novel, Benang. It continues to seek out and support and foster the work of developing Western Australian writers.

It concerns me that in the aftermath of the minister’s decision on this issue some people continue to misrepresent the debate and its outcome. I have seen the campaign against the proposed changes characterised as being ‘relentless’, ‘well organised’, ‘expensive’, and waged by ‘well-connected spruikers’. That is hugely ironic when you consider that those who led the campaign for change and the nature of that campaign. A front-page article in the Australian newspaper on the day after the minister’s decision described how the campaign to keep the current system was prosecuted by a so-called ‘Labor-saturated lobbyist’—while somehow failing to mention the countervailing effort of former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr. Bizarrely, the decision was repeatedly characterised as constituting a mortal blow to the life prospects of under-privileged kids.

Indeed, reading the press coverage, one could be forgiven at times for thinking that the streets were full of impoverished school children with not quite enough loose change in their hands to purchase the text book that was critical to their entire future. But where was the evidence of this straw victim? It is as if, in reading the post mortems on the now dead effort to tear down an effective market design, that it was poor David who had fallen here at the hands of a terrible Goliath; that a powerful ogre in the shape of, say, Jose Borghino or Tim Winton, had done terrible things to the puny but noble people’s champion in the form of Woolworths or Coles. This is laughable.

Never mind the fact that of the nearly 270 submissions received by the Productivity Commission, something like 260 were made against the proposed changes. Never mind that this issue had been considered by four or five previous inquiries, and that each time the decision had been to leave the system unchanged. Never mind the fact that the proponents of change pitched their argument on this complex issue to the ever-reliable hip pocket. As Jose Borghino pointed out:

The other side had a two-word, simplistic slogan: cheaper books.

Yet even that basic case could not be made with any certainty. First, the assertion that the parallel importation restrictions were the cause of more expensive books in Australia was never convincingly established. Second—in what was to my mind the most telling observation on this point—the Productivity Commission itself acknowledged that the free rein given to the enormous retailers that dominate the Australian market might well in the end result in any small price reduction being undone by the way oligopolies tend to operate in this country.

Let us remember in all this that the principal advocate for change was the Coalition for Cheaper Books—a group which included Dymocks, Woolworths, Kmart and Coles. Among these are the same large retailers that dominate the market for liquor, groceries and fuel. It might just as accurately have been called the Coalition for Greater Market Dominance, Less Competition and Higher Profits. Even if you accept the premise that the removal of the parallel importation restrictions would have delivered some cheaper books, the question remains: what would those books have been? Once the big retailers had been allowed to undercut local editions with imported remainders, and once the small independent publishers and booksellers had been ground under in the name of unfettered market forces, what would the range of books available in Big W or Kmart have looked like? This is the point that is always missed by those who marshal the figures. It is not just about cost and quantity but also about substance and quality.

The government has rightly decided to keep in place a market arrangement that is structured to maintain Australian writing and publishing, and to ensure that books of the highest quality are something that we continue to write and make and teach and read to our children in this country; that Australian books and Australian writers continue to be the deep-running undercurrent of our national voice, character and identity.