It didn’t take long for the COAG announcement about parallel importation of books to flush the myopic forces of cultural protectionism out. Today we learnt that the Australian Publishers Association and the Australian Society of Authors had hired Hawker Britton to stymie efforts to remove protectionist restrictions on Australia’s book industry.
Successive governments have either wussed it or been blocked by the Senate from removing restrictions on the sale of books. Allan Fels did sterling work on this issue over a number of years but left the ACCC without having seen the last bastion of books brought down, as software and import music restrictions had been. That COAG agreed to fix this anti-competitive rort was an unexpected delight emerging from last week’s meeting. Peter Garrett, who led the music industry charge against Fels back in the 1990s, must be having conniptions.
Australian publishers, like other beneficiaries of media regulation like the FTA TV networks and music companies, have had to watch as their fortresses of protectionism have been bypassed by the internet, with consumers exercising the power it hands them to get what they want when they want it, legally or illegally. With a strong Australia-US exchange rate, there’s never been a better time to buy GST-free books from Amazon.
(Strangely, author Nick Earls argues that consumers using the internet to buy books means no reform is needed. It’s not often that evidence that an industry model is failing to meet consumer needs is held up as a reason why it is working just fine.)
Books aren’t the only front on which cultural protectionists are moving. A fortnight ago, ABC TV head Kim Dalton called for a regulatory response to the fact that Australian content requirements on television were being left behind by the shift of content to the internet. Dalton’s point was correct, but his solution, for the government to regulate online content, comes straight from the analog era he was declaring we had left behind.
The answer is for the ABC to create compelling Australian content available across all its platforms (which, it must be acknowledged, it is far ahead of other broadcasters in doing). But the regulate-or-hell mindset is particularly strong in television, where one of the most aggressive rentseekers and protectionists of all, the Screen Producers Association, routinely demands the imposition of draconian content levels on networks and requirements for external production — all intended to drive trade directly to its own members, under the guise of supporting Australian content.
What cultural protectionism amounts to is a mistrust of Australian consumers. Protectionists may declare that Australians will watch/read/listen to “our stories, told well” but either don’t believe it or don’t trust their own capacity to deliver just that. Until ten years ago, they could rely on Governments to regulate the problem away. But online content and commerce routes around that problem very nicely indeed.
The Australian Publishers Association’s campaign should be seen for what it is — the last holdout of copyright protectionism by an industry that fears competition and its inability to meet the demands of Australian consumers.
The publishing industry in Australia is a cultural success story the ALP can take some credit for. One of the successful reforms of the Hawke government was the introduction of the thirty day “use it or lose it rule” for rights to the Australian market, which has seen the industry stabilise and flourish, albeit on very skinny profit margins and in the face of extraordinary pressures and risks.
Every book published here is a high risk punt. Australian book publishers are seeing this referral to the Productivity Commission as a kick in the teeth. The UK and the US markets will remain closed, so why open our small Australian market? The winners in this will be the giant US suppliers, Barnes and Noble, Baker and Taylor and Ingrams and the losers will be Australian writers and book buyers who are creating and consuming local content.
When the Commission looked at the prices of books in 2001, the figures showed that when the parallel importation restrictions were introduced, prices generally got cheaper. The industry flourished, producing 64% Australian content without regulation to enforce it, growth in employment, particularly for part time employees and freelancers, and increased numbers of published local authors, some of whom are now winning and being shortlisted for the Pulitzer , the Booker, the Orange and the Astrid Lindgren Award – the richest prize in the world directed at a children’s author.
All this because the Australian publishing sector enjoys a similar protection afforded to the USA and UK, enabling it to invest in nurturing, publishing and marketing Australian authors.
Similarly we are the envy of the world because we have healthy independent bookseller segment in a market that is not yet dominated by chains. This gives Australians the opportunity to source a wide range and diversity of books other than just large volume best sellers.
Remove the capacity for Australia to compete and watch Australia become the remainder table for the overseas publishing industries.