Library Card
I really need to get it together to get myself a library card. I’ve never even visited my local public library, and while the little time I’ve spent in other branches hasn’t impressed me, Glebe’s looks like it might be big enough to be worth visiting. I say this with a few unread volumes of one thing or another sitting on a shelf waiting for me to get to, but books are among the most expensive consumer item in this country, and I consume a fair few. Despite a recent move towards opening Australia to cheap imports, there’s a hue and cry, as there often is in these protectionist matters, of opposition. Australian publishers, particularly in regard to Australian authors, can’t compete against the prodigious output of America, or even the U.K., for that matter. And Australian authors can’t compete if they can’t even get published in their own country, and they won’t be if the local publishers can’t afford to stay open. Theoretically, I suppose, there would still be some demand for local product, forcing the number of publishers to shrink and specialize, but more likely it would simply send Australian writers overseas and to abandon writing, if only writing about Australia. Sure, we’ve got a Nobel Prize winner, and sure, screenplays have been adapted from our stories, but nobody much reads Patrick White anymore, no matter how good he was, and those movies didn’t do particularly well at home or abroad, so where’s the worth? I’m not a fan overall of protectionist trade practices, but I’d hate to think Tim Winton would have to give up or move to California, or that we’d lose out on the next Miles Franklin ever having a brilliant career. The small Australian houses have, over the years, been eaten up by multinational publishing and media conglomerates, and that trend would only be exacerbated by the end of import restrictions. It’s bad enough that television, movies, and Microsoft dictionary settings are undermining Australia’s authentic voice. Not our writers, too.