This assumes that Australian culture is, like the continent itself, an island, detached from the world around it. In truth it is hard to think of a national culture more connected to and dependent upon outside influences. Since 1788, when the first modern immigrants arrived, Australian culture has developed as a mash-up of world cultures. Each new wave of immigrants has accelerated this process. The culture of indigenous Australians can truly be said to be a unique and distinct product of Australia. Everything else is borrowed, adapted or inspired by foreign cultures. Our great novelists grew up on a staple British literature. Our film and TV-makers are saturated in the culture of Hollywood. Our rock stars perform in a genre forged in America from European melodies and African rhythms. Our scientists operate in a global community of inquiry. Our chefs unapologetically borrow culinary arts from Western Europe, Northern Africa and South-East Asia. In almost every Australian home, people eat foods from around the world. Is our national dish the meat pie, the chicken parma, the kebab or the dim sim? Whichever it is, it wasn't done here first. This is not to deride Australian culture. Our openness to new ideas is close to miraculous. Not all cultures are so ready to admit that foreigners can do some things better. This is the Australian culture worth celebrating. It takes things from around the world and blends them together into something new, something that is ours. It isn't a vulnerable ancient tradition that needs preservation. It is a young, robust and hungry way of life.

Cultural protectionism doesn't help this culture to thrive: it cuts off its food source. Any policy directed towards restricting or increasing the price of foreign cultural products cannot be helpful to our culture. Our artists and writers are consumers of culture before they are producers of it. They should be given as easy access to foreign material as possible. Take the parallel import restriction as a topical example. This is a law that prevents anyone from importing legal copies of books into Australia if the publisher has already released the book into Australian bookstores. In effect, this means publishers can set different prices for their books in Australia than in other markets, without having to worry that booksellers will simply import books from the market where they are sold cheaper. I recently purchased a book from Amazon that retails for about $23 in the US but $60 in Australia. If not for the parallel import restriction, it is hard to fathom that this sort of price discrepancy could persist. Publishers say that these laws help local authors by preventing the dumping of cheap foreign books and providing publishers with extra revenue on foreign titles that can be used to subsidise the publication of Australian ones. Taken on its own terms, it provides a tax on foreign books to subsidise and reduce competition for local books. Leaving aside the weirdness of letting private companies set and levy a tax in the vague (and unaudited) hope that they use it to subside local authors, a special tax on books is poison to the cultural and intellectual life of the nation. We are not talking about cigarettes or alcopops. Reading foreign books is not a harmful vice. Nor is it unAustralian. Indeed, reading foreign books and scouring them for good ideas is close to a patriotic duty. If we hold genuine concerns that Australian artists and writers are struggling to make ends meet, we should support them in ways that don't involve cutting off foreign works. Direct subsidies to authors make far more sense than relying on the noblesse oblige of a profiteering publishing industry. We already provide taxpayer money direct to artists and writers. It is a shame some of that gets wasted paying inflated prices for their foreign source material.

Australian culture is enriched whenever an Australian artist or writer gets to work. But it is also enriched when any Australian admires, enjoys, is inspired or informed by a foreign work. This is who we are: a nation of immigrants, eclectic in tastes, open to ideas, curious about the world, keen to experiment and ready to adapt. The only thing this culture needs protection from is protectionism. Jacob Varghese is a Melbourne lawyer.