SAVING AUSSIE BOOKS

EXTRACTS FROM THE MEDIA  /  LATEST INFO FROM OTHER SOURCES

Sheryl Gwyther:

I’m thrilled (on behalf of many Australian children’s authors) to see Julia Gillard has set up an Inquiry into the state of school libraries in Australia and is calling for submissions.This is your chance to do something positive and practical to help.

School libraries have steadily lost funding, support and teacher librarians over ten years and the situation has reached crisis point in many schools.

Children’s authors owe a huge gratitude to school librarians – they are like the forward troops in battle, the foot soldiers, and maybe the engineers. They prepare the ground by encouraging and enthusing children to read. They invite children’s authors into their schools to talk to children. They use their depleting funds to buy books. They have the skills to integrate literature into every subject area – not a skill shared by all classroom teachers.

So I have started up the SAVING AUSSIE BOOKS blog again – mainly to inform and to let people know there is only short time to send in a submission. Another very informative site is THE HUB, set up by Teacher-Librarians to battle for school libraries.

The final date for submissions to the Gillard Inquiry into public and private school libraries is 16th April, 2010.

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MEDIA RELEASE ABOUT THE SCHOOLS LIBRARIES INQUIRY

Announcing the inquiry, committee chair Ms Sharon Bird, MP, stated “Teacher librarians make a significant contribution to the school community in a number of ways, including teaching information literacy skills and providing access to information and resources to facilitate learning. The committee looks forward to hearing the views of interested stakeholders from around the country.”
The committee invites interested organisations and individuals to make written submissions to the inquiry, addressing the terms of reference, by 16 April 2010.

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NOVEMBER 11 2009 – PRESS RELEASE

Yes, it’s official – THE BATTLE IS WON! At least for the time being.

FEDERAL ALP CAUCUS HAS THROWN OUT THE PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION’S REVIEW

PARALLEL IMPORTATION RESTRICTIONS WILL REMAIN

September 15
Jobs fight continues

For full comments:  Bendigo Advertisor

THE fight to save jobs in Maryborough intensified last night after Federal Member for Bendigo Steve Gibbons tabled a petition in Parliament with 3885 signatures.

The petition calls on plans to remove parallel import restrictions on the Printing and Publishing Industries to be rejected.

The lifting of the restrictions could result in the loss of jobs in the Bendigo Electorate, especially in Maryborough where McPherson’s Print Group, the largest employer in town, is based.

“Maryborough has a population of just over 8000 people so almost half of the population has recorded strong opposition to the removal of parallel import restrictions,” Mr Gibbons said.

“They know this has the potential to decimate Maryborough’s biggest employer, McPherson’s Print Group which employee about 300 to 350 Maryborough residents,” he said……

August 29
Keneally’s novel trade solution

For full comments: The Australian
Written by: Lenore Taylor, National correspondent

…….. But as things stand, I think the risk of paying more for some books is well outweighed by the risk of not having the range of locally published books available to buy.

That’s why I hope Rudd listens to Keneally, Tanner listens to Flanagan and the cabinet listens to the grassroots of its party, as reflected in the findings of its special committee. Even free-traders need to acknowledge there are some things every nation should protect. Surely high on that list should be its own culture in all its complexity, its own ideas in all their diversity and the people and industries to tell and disseminate them.

August 29
Cabinet split on cheaper books as PM urged to keep ban

For full story: The Australian
Written by: Lenore Taylor, National correspondent

AUSTRALIAN readers could continue to pay high prices for books, as the Rudd government faces increasing internal pressure to maintain restrictions on overseas book imports.

A special Labor Party working group will this week recommend the restrictions be kept, to protect local authors, publishers and printing workers.

The report says the government should reject an appeal by big retailers such as Dymocks and Woolworths that they be able to sell imported books more cheaply.

Federal cabinet is split on the issue, which it will consider within weeks when it receives a submission from Competition Minister Craig Emerson. He is understood to take the opposite view to the working party, backing instead a recent recommendation from the Productivity Commission that the import restrictions be removed……

August 15/16
TWITTERER BREAKS RANKS

For full comment: Sydney Morning Herald
Written by: Susan Wyndham in her Undercover column

Speaking of naughtiness, at least one Dymocks employee does not agree with the company’s campaign for an open book market……

August 6
Minister Writes off  Book Imports

For full article:  Sydney Morning Herald
Written by:  Jacob Saulwick and Mark Davis

In what could be a blow to the push by Dymocks, Coles and Woolworths, the Industry Minister, Kim Carr, said there was little evidence the price of books would fall if import restrictions were removed…..

July 31
Pledge to back Aussie Books

For full article: The Australian
Correspondent: Lenore Taylor

THE Rudd government has refused to lock down a position on the contentious debate about lifting the ban on the importation of cheap overseas-produced books, but has said the priority is the viability of the Australian publishing industry.

Left-wing unions and the publishing industry were urging the government to use this week’s ALP national conference in Sydney to reject the recent recommendation from the Productivity Commission that the ban be lifted.

After days of behind-the-scenes negotiations with advisers to the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Attorney-General — who has formal carriage of the issue — the government has instead set up a Labor Party working group to report back within a month.

July 30
Book import decision won’t be rushed, says Simon Crean

For full article: news.com.au
AAP July 30, 2009 10:51am

The Productivity Commission has recommended century-old laws be phased out over a three-year period, a move vehemently opposed by local publishers and authors…..

July 27
Productivity Commission CRIT – Regular feature: Dee White’s critique of the Productivity Commission’s recommendations

CRIT 3 – THE PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION’S APPROACH TO EDUCATION

Dear Mr Rudd, Mr Garrett, Mr Bowen and to all supporters of the Arts and Culture in Australia.
Today, I wanted to briefly tackle the topic of education and its relevance to this issue. On page 1.5 of its report, the Commission states that its brief is to determine whether:

• the restrictions generate more benefits than costs to the Australian community

• there are other policy options that could generate greater net benefits.

It goes on to say, that
In making such assessments, the Commission interprets benefits and costs in their fullest sense – that is, covering the value of social, cultural and educational matters, as well as financial or material ones – and assess them within the community-wide framework as required by the Productivity Commission Act 1998.

Educational books currently form around 40 per cent of the total value of books sales.

Even if you discount the huge Australian job losses if the printing and production of books is done offshore, is it not concerning to think of the possibility of our educational books being ‘manufactured overseas’?

For other short articles showing Dee White’s examination of the inconsistencies threaded through the Productivity Commission’s Report on PIs, go to her blog site.

Jul 23
Our writers and publishers don’t need handouts

For full article:  THE MELBOURNE AGE online
Written by: Michael Heywood – Publisher at Text Publishing

Why tamper with the one creative industry that is standing on its own feet?

OUR book industry is lively, diverse and inventive, and it’s growing. It may now be our most successful creative industry. But you won’t learn that from the recent Productivity Commission report. As the gospellers of deregulation, the commissioners have stuck to their hymn sheet: remove all import restrictions, strike down territorial copyright!

No surprise about that. But these evangelists for the unfettered market then want the taxpayer to bear the cost of their cultural engineering. They think it’s fine to undermine royalties, which purely reflect market demand, and that writers should make do with handouts. ………

July 16
Authors’ subsidies may not be worth reading about

For full article:  THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD online
Written by: Jacob Saulwick – National Correspondent

‘EVEN if the Government increases subsidies to writers in exchange for scrapping import restrictions on books, as advocated by its economic adviser, any extra support could well be marginal.

To the dismay of writers, publishers and small booksellers, on Tuesday the Productivity Commission recommended removing restrictions on book imports to help make them cheaper.

It acknowledged the changes would hurt the industry. But it said the Government could help promote the cultural value of Australian authors through direct subsidies, rather than by general import restrictions.

However, if the Government follows the commission’s advice, those subsidies are likely to be relatively small. This is because, according to the commission, current import restrictions provide little support for Australian writers.’…..

July 22
Book trade says change in Australia bad for NZ

For full article:  THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD online
Written by: Maria Slade

‘A recommendation that the Australian Government lift parallel importing restrictions on books would have a significant impact on New Zealand, the local book trade says ……….  Although parallel importing has been allowed in New Zealand for some time the Kiwi industry has been in the shadow of the Australian regime.

Most publishers are transtasman and so the Australian 30/90 rule has meant New Zealand booksellers can get timely access to titles without having to import from elsewhere.

July 22
Book battle set to bite

For full article:   THE AUSTRALIAN
Written by: Murray St Leger – president of the Australian Publishers Association, and managing director of McGraw-Hill Australia/New Zealand.

TEXTBOOK publishers could be caught up in the proposed copyright changes.

“LAST week the battle over Australian territorial copyright hotted up with the release of the final report from the Productivity Commission, Restrictions on the Parallel Importation of Books.

The media went into overdrive, but you could have been forgiven for thinking that the fight was between best-selling literary authors and one of the large bookselling chains.

Australia’s $600 million-a-year education publishing industry was hardly mentioned at all.

Maybe this is because, unlike the trade arena, in education, all the major players are united: the publishers, the campus booksellers, the printers and many academic authors having all come out in support of the existing copyright arrangements.

The commission is recommending that all restrictions on the importation of overseas (“parallel”) editions of a book be lifted within three years of the government accepting its recommendations. This would effectively mean that Australian publishers would no longer have the present certainty that they are the sole legitimate supplier of a book in the Australian marketplace.

This removal of certainty would have serious negative repercussions not just for education publishers but for our education system generally. And yet, there is no guarantee that the commission’s recommendations would significantly lower the price of books, which is their ostensible objective.” …..

July 16
Cheaper Books? Don’t count on it

For full article: ABC Radio online
Written by:  Nick Earls, award-winning author

Cheaper books – it’s a great carrot to dangle, but are things really that simple? Australian author Nick Earls thinks not.

‘First, are books in Australia more expensive than elsewhere? The Productivity Commission worked hard to prove that was the case, but couldn’t. In the end they decided that measuring the magnitude of any actual price efforts related to territorial copyright was ‘problematic’ and in its recent draft report did not ‘put a figure on them’. The entire argument from the Coalition for Big Business (sorry, Coalition for Cheaper Books, ie, Wesfarmers, Woolworths, Dymocks, etc) is that abandoning territorial copyright would make books cheaper, but no one has proven that it does.’ …..

July 20
Readings on the Productivity Commission’s report

For full article: READINGS BOOKSTORES online news
Written by:  Mark Rubbo, Managing Director of Readings

‘Removing the restrictions may jeopardise all that has been achieved: if booksellers can import slightly cheaper copies of Australian or foreign authored books that are also published here, it stands to reason that the investment the Australian publisher has made is in jeopardy. They become less profitable, less willing to take risks. The only secure investment they can make is in books that nobody else would be interested in and we risk moving from an industry that is culturally confident and outward looking to one that is timid and parochial. It’s interesting to note that no other country with a sophisticated publishing culture and industry has removed similar restrictions that apply.

As a bookseller, I do occasionally find the regulations frustrating. But these frustrations pale into insignificance when I contemplate the possibility of the total removal of the regulations and its consequences – all on the uncertain chance that some of the books we buy may become a bit cheaper. If you care about your culture, write to your MP and tell them that you want a vibrant Australian publishing industry.’…..

July 18/19:  THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN
Miles Franklin goes to New York

For full article:  The Weekend Australian online
Written by: Louise Adler – chief executive and Publisher-in-chief of Melbourne University Publishing

‘THE year is 2014 and the winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award is to be announced. The publishing industry is also awaiting a survey of the consequences of the abolition of territory copyright mandated by a Productivity Commission report in 2009. The Miles Franklin must be given to a work of Australian fiction by an Australian author.

Kate Grenville, Tim Winton and Richard Flanagan have been short-listed, each qualifying with brilliant new novels indisputably located onshore. Winton triumphs again. Let’s call the winning novel Cloudstreet Regained. In his absence, his proud publisher claims the generous cheque. She has come a long way to speak in Winton’s honour, all the way from New York in fact. But why wouldn’t she? After all, she has finally levered world rights away from her Australian counterparts. For 30 years she and her predecessors battled Winton’s proud cultural nationalism, his feisty Australian publishers, his culturally sympathetic editors and his agent’s vigorous defence of his commercial value by properly selling separate territorial rights.’…..

July 17:   ADELAIDE NOW
Adelaide printers fear cheap imports

For full report:  Adelaide Now online
Written by: Deborah Bogel – correspondent

‘Adelaide printing and publishing companies fear their businesses will be damaged under the free market for books recommended by the Productivity Commission this week.

Nor do they believe that changes to the law will result in cheaper books for readers.

Griffin Press is one of only three Australian printing businesses which between them produce most locally made books for the domestic market. It employs 160 printers, bookbinders, graphic artists and other staff at its Salisbury plant.’ ……

July 15:  SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Restrictions on imported books hang in balance

For full report: Sydney Morning Herald
Jacob Saulwick National Correspondent

“But the minister responsible for any changes, the Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, is understood to support the current system, which prevents local publishers competing against low-cost imports.

The Arts Minister, Peter Garrett, is also said to support the status quo. However, there is a competing view that publishers have been cosseted by the restrictions, likely to be advanced by ministers with economic portfolios, such as Craig Emerson.” ……

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July 15:  BOOKSELLERS + PUBLISHER ONLINE
BOOKSELLERS ASSOC. JOINS OTHERS IN ATTACKING P.C. REPORT

For full article see Bookseller + Publisher Online

“Unsurprisingly, the ABA and APA, together with the Australian Society of Authors (ASA), the Australian Literary Agents Association (ALAA) and printing peak body Printing Industries have all attacked the Commission’s recommendations.

The APA said the Commission’s report was ‘a triumph of ideology over evidence’. Citing the objections of publishers, authors, printers, state governments and ‘over 90% of booksellers’, that wished to see the current legislation retained, APA CEO Maree McCaskill said the Commission had ignored the evidence put by these parties because ‘it doesn’t fit the rigid free-market mindset of the Productivity Commission, which is determined to abolish [PIRs], evidence or no evidence’.” …..

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July 18: Bendigo Advertiser

JOHN BRUMBY GETS BEHIND AUSSIE BOOKS
In an article in Saturday’s Bendigo Advertiser, the Victorian Premier John Brumby has clearly sided with the publishing industry on the issue of removing Parallel Import Restrictions on books.

He said that such a move would ‘put at risk the cultural and economic gains made in the book industry over the past two decades’.

Mr Brumby also expressed concern at the jobs that would be lost if PIRs were removed, and in Sacha McDougal’s article in the Bendigo Advertiser, Mr Brumby said, ‘it would be an act of economic and cultural vandalism.’  …….