The spotlight is back on Australia’s book industry after an award-winning novelist has accused Malcolm Turnbull of wanting to destroy it.
While delivering a keynote address at the Australian Book Industry Awards held over the weekend, writer Richard Flanagan launched the tirade.
He told the audience, “They want to thieve our past work, and, by ending parallel importation restrictions (PIR) and territorial copyright, destroy any future for Australian writers.”
Flanagan’s line of argument stems from earlier this month when the Australian Government’s Productivity Commission released a draft report of its nine-month inquiry into intellectual property.
The book industry has suggested the report recommends the reduction of authors copyright from 70 years after death to 15 to 25 after creation and also the removal of PIR in favour of a US-style system
where courts determine the property rights of individual book titles.
Currently in Australia, PIR prevents the importation of commercial quantities of books without the copyright holder’s permission if the publisher makes the title available in Australia soon after its release.
Book printing, which falls under ‘publication printing services’ contributes 27.4 per cent of the Australian
print industry’s total revenue. The industry has warned the removal of PIR will reduce the segment ‘beyond the point of sustainability’ and threaten jobs.
After Flanagan’s heated speech, Liberal senator for Victoria The Hon Mitch Fifield released a press statement which labelled the speculation on copyright changes ‘unfounded’.
Fifield goes on to say that claims the Government is planning to reduce the life of copyright are false, ‘this is not something the Government has considered, proposed or intends to do’.
In addressing the removal of PIR, Fifield says the report notes that Australia is a party to several free trade agreements and therefore it cannot alter copyright terms without engaging in international
negotiations and overhauling international standards.
In response to Fifield’s arguments, the Australian Publishers Association has called on the Government to provide the industry with economic certainty and has also requested a meeting with Fifield to discuss the issues.
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