Last week, the Australian government’s Productivity Commission (PC) recommended in a draft report that Australia eliminates its parallel importation restrictions (PIRs) on books. Let’s not mince words: this report is a broadside against copyright. As Susan Hawthorne wrote last week: “Understanding why it’s bad to abolish restrictions on the importation of books can be hard, which means it can be hard to care. But trust me, you need know why this is terrible for us all.”

The thing to understand about PIRs is that they uphold copyright, and allow writers to be paid properly for their work. PIRs make Australian booksellers that want to bulk order buy from the publisher that holds Australian rights to that book, and not from one overseas. In return for this, the Australian publisher has to make that book available in Australia very quickly. It’s basically a “use-it-or-lose-it” rule – publishers have to make books available quick-smart (usually within 14 days of their publication anywhere in the world), or lose their exclusive importation rights.

PIRs have been in force for 25 years, and don’t affect your freedom of choice in the internet age: parallel importation is legal for consumers and booksellers wanting to buy individual books online. Regardless of whether PIRs go or stay, any book in the world is still a click away.

Removing import restrictions would harm Australian authors, say publishers Read more

The government says it wants “to make local booksellers more competitive with international suppliers, promote lower prices for consumers and ensure the timely availability of titles”. The theory is that allowing Australian booksellers to source books from anywhere might mean cheaper books.

But that was the effect of PIRs, when they came in in 1991. These days, Australia’s book industry is pretty cheap, despite our comparatively small market. Book prices have dropped in real terms by 30% in the last decade and our industry is not subsidised (nor can it be if we are to publish freely in our democracy): we pay our way. The Australian publishing industry is one of our great cultural success stories – our publishing for children and young adults, for instance, sets international standards.

The government is flying blind: there has been no official data on the book industry for more than 10 years; the last research done on prices was before the ebook and digital printing revolutionised pricing and availability. Back then, the PC admitted it could not predict what would happen if PIRs were removed.

“It is not possible to provide a definitive estimate of the effects of PIRs on book prices,” it wrote in September 2009, “or an unequivocal prediction of market-wide price movements in their absence.” The PC has done no research in markets such as New Zealand, which dismantled its PIRs – but books are not cheaper there, and the publishing industry has declined.

The truth is that book prices have been falling in Australia in real terms in the last two-and-a-half decades. We have a nimble, efficient, innovative industry. We have a dynamic retail culture, including some of the best bookstores in the world. Our industry is not subsidised. We pay our way.

If PIRs are removed, the winners will be the biggest distributors and retailers in the world, who will become free-riders in a market that was developed by tax-paying Australian publishers and retailers. The losers will be Australian readers, when our writers and publishers struggle to compete against their counterparts in Britain and the US, where PIRs remain firmly in place. Income will be transferred from Australian creators and producers to foreign distributors, who can dump low, or zero-royalty foreign editions of their books.

Australia has the most efficient and creative copyright regime in the world – it balances the demands of commerce and culture, the rights of consumers and creators. Copyright rewards all the separate skills – writing, editorial, design, rights, production, distribution, marketing and publicity – that go into making and selling a book. Unfettered imports of foreign-made books would destroy our ability to reward all of those skills.

Especially those writing about Australia. PIRs protect Australian stories and make them widely available to local and international readers at affordable prices. Because of that, we have more authors, more prize-winning authors, more authors with international readerships, more publishers, more ways of selling and buying books and more Australian books. If we don’t protect this environment, our best writers will become the poor cousins of English-language publishing, with no choice but to appeal to overseas publishers, who do not care about our stories or understand their importance as we do.

Just before Christmas, prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said: “Culture is the very essence of who we are. How we express ourselves … how our writers describe us … makes us the nation that we are ... a nation without an ability to portray itself, to mock itself, to idealise itself, to exaggerate itself, would not be a nation at all.”

Marvellous words, but the government he leads is planning to trash the rules our writers need if their stories are to reach readers in Australia and abroad. Without those rules we might become – to borrow his compelling phrase – a nation without a story. Only a government that does not value the quality of the books Australia produces would deprive its writers of the market mechanism they need to create great stories. Australia is the largest market in the world for Australian books , and the tragedy is that it is Australian readers of all ages who would, if the PC gets its way, pay the price for this assault on the nation’s storytellers.

If you would like to sign a Change.org petition to save Australian literature, go here.