Retailers have called for the GST to be levied on goods bought online from overseas retailers in an effort to level the playing field between local and foreign businesses.

But retailers themselves acknowledge that adding the GST would only help the local retail sector marginally in the face of global online competition.

“The internet has created a gigantic pressure machine for many industries, which just bears on prices relentlessly,” said independent publisher Henry Rosenbloom of Melbourne-based Scribe Publications.

He supports the application of GST to online imports, even if it will only smooth out the price gap slightly between locally printed books costing $35 and overseas editions which can average about $14.

“It's a completely indefensible situation where an Australian bookseller is being competed against by an offshore bookseller who doesn't have the same tax obligations,” he said. “That's terribly tough to deal with.”