Oz import compromise fails to please critics
30.09.09 Catherine Neilan in The Bookseller

Australia's Competition Minister Craig Emerson has offered a "compromise" on the changes to book importation laws, after facing widespread opposition within the cabinet.
According to The Australian newspaper, the minister is now recommending that the government retain the import restrictions, which the Productivity Commission called to be removed in July, instead requiring local publishers to release books simultaneously with their overseas publication. Current regulations allow up to 30 days.
Emerson was forced to backtrack after a number of Australian ministers, including Industry Minister Kim Carr, Arts Minister Peter Garrett, Attorney-General Robert McClelland, Regional Development Minister Anthony Albanese and Immigration Minister Chris Evans, opposed the Commission's recommendations.
However, the compromise has also been met with criticism, both from within the government and the publishing industry.

According to Bookseller + Publisher, the APA estimated the changes would reduce locally published international titles with print runs under 10,000 copies by between a third and a half. APA chief executive Maree McCaskill said the compromise did not acknowledge the work that goes into making books available under the current rules.

"This issue is not even understood by booksellers and the [Australian Booksellers Association],' McCaskill said. "Some of the commentary from Emerson, from [his] conversations with booksellers was the idea that publishers "sit on books". No, they need the books out there to be sold. It suits them to publish simultaneously, it doesn't suit them to be lagging behind. As it is they sweat blood to [publish] in thirty days."
She added it would be equally damaging to retailers, who have largely supported the idea of reform. "Less of those [international] books will come in and more [customers] will go online to Amazon... than they do now," McCaskill said.
"It [also] jeopardises the local printing market because volume coming in from overseas is what keeps the prices down locally. You would in fact put upward pressure on prices."

Within the government, Victorian backbencher Steve Gibbons, whose electorate of Bendigo is home to a printing business employing 300 people, was reported as saying: "This would still cause disruption to the industry without any obvious point. It's almost as if [Mr Emerson] is on a mission to reform something, anything."