Thursday, 12 November 2009
The Minister for Innovation has decided to ignore the Productivity Commission’s recommendations, and not to change the Australian regulatory regime for books introduced by the previous Labor government. In other words, publishers get to keep their territorial exclusivity for books, and the government thinks we should all get e-Readers instead (seriously, that’s practically in the press release).
Gans says it all really – the government, having spent the first year or two of their governmental life commissioning independent reviews and reports of various kinds has shown that lobbying can overturn any recommendations that result. Look forward to an increase in the lobbying population in Canberra.
But what I find amusing/interesting is this. When the film industry lobbied for better protection in the context of the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement negotiations, they lost. The book publishing industry has won. Which do you think has a brighter future in this increasingly audio-visual age…?
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4 Responses to “Protectionism maintained”
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November 12th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Perhaps they figure that as their industry is dying anyway, they may as well throw ’em a bone. ;)
November 12th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
It seems completely illogical to me that the Government would seek to navigate the course that it has. The reality in this saga is that the increasing Australian dollar (which wont be disappearing in the short term – aka christmas sales – due to comments evinced by the US Fed of intending to keep interest rates on hold for at 24 months) and this absolutely creates a market which is disincentive towards purchasing local books at higher prices. More so – the Amazon Kindle reader is now internationally distributed (among many other e-readers including the upcoming Apple Tablet) and is leading the charge towards ebooks.
Evidently, the Government even recognises its own flaws The Commission recommended extra budgetary funding of authors and publishers to compensate them for this loss …. If books cannot be made available in a timely fashion and at a competitive price, customers will opt for online sales and e-books. – so basically the taxpayer foots the bill, and consumers move to Amazon and e-books which they are already doing anyway.
November 12th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Kim, for some reason your November posts do not appear from the front page.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:43 am
I think The Australian picked it up nicely by saying that only those with computers and internet access and/or quite expensive e-readers would be able to take advantage of cheaper online prices like bookdepository.co.uk. The rest of the population, who can’t afford computers or e-readers, or struggle with them, will continue to pay the higher price at the physical bookshop.
The fact that the press release acknowledged that online sources are where consumers can exert competitive pressure highlights just how regressive this regime currently is. The poorer you are and the less access you have to reliable internet, the more you will pay for books.
Mind you, the Productivity Commission probably shot themselves in the foot a few times with their shabby interim report and their rather lack-of-solid-evidence-but-plenty-of-conjecture final report.