I am not sure if we have any media present at this morning's hearing but if so if they could make themselves known to Anderson, our colleague at the back of the room and will explain the rules regarding media. Finally, to comply with the requirements of the Commonwealth Occupational Health and Safety Legislation, we advise that in the unlikely event of an emergency requiring the evacuation of this building that the exits are located from the terrace room just outside and on your left. Your assembly point is the terraced area outside this room where you will then be directed by the area warden to the exit point via Chelsea Lane Way to take you to the corner of Turbot Street and North Quay. If you require assistance please speak to one of our inquiry team members here today. Participants are invited to make some opening remarks, no more than five minutes. Keeping the opening remarks brief will allow us the opportunity to discuss matters and participants' points raised in participants' submissions in greater detail. Participants are welcome to comment on the issues raised in other submissions however with ground rules relating to the opening remarks. I will stop there and I would now like to ask Nicholas, who is at the table, our first participant. So if you could, for the purposes of the transcript, give your name and organisation and then, when you are ready, if you would like to give brief opening remarks, thank you. DR Thank you. My name is Nicolas Suzor, I am a senior research fellow from Queensland University of Technology. I am here today in my academic capacity but I am also happy to speak about the submissions of the two NGOs that I am involved with, Creative Commons Australia and Digital Rights Watch. So first, I would like to thank the Commission both for holding a hearing and inviting us here today, but also for a really comprehensive and quite careful thorough evidence based report. This is an area that has typically not been marked by evidence-based policy. Copyright development is typically driven by essentially by a lack of good empirical economic analysis. And into that comes a mess of special interests lobbying and law making. I think it is heartening to see the Productivity Commission's move in this report to really try to inject some evidence based policy making into Australian policy, we see this report particularly building on the fairly careful reports of other submissions, other bodies, over the last 15 years. Unfortunately one of the big challenges that we have had is translating the work, the careful work, of many different reporting teams into policy change, meaningful policy change.
loss and closure of many. As an independent bookseller who offers real choice to consumers, you only need to walk into one to notice the difference between an independent bookseller’s stock and what you can buy at Big W. The impact will be reduced annual output of Australian titles for consumers. Because Australian publishers will be struggling they – and because they invest time and money in the production of Australian books, lifting the PIRs and changes to copyright, will undermine their investment, as Michael said, and this will force the publisher to produce fewer Australian books, take fewer risks with new authors, and be less likely to reprint books by current authors. With little opportunity for new Australian voices to break into the market, new talent will be overlooked, the old will wane or reinvent itself to suit the international market, and Australian content and flavour will be lost to consumers. (3) Consumers may end up paying more for quality Australian books and not less. With all these job losses, as Louise said from Hachette, the scale, the economy of scale, will reduce and Australian quality books may indeed become more expensive. The unproven benefits for consumers do not outweigh job losses in a thriving book industry that does not even rely on government handouts or subsidies. Lastly, I go back to my point, consumers of children’s books will be disadvantaged by foreign edition parallel imports. Australian children’s understanding of self-identity and their place in the world will be eroded. Children struggling with reading will be at risk. I see no benefits to consumers with the removal of PIRs. Thank you very much for your time. MR COPPEL: Thank you. MS SUNDE: Sorry, it took so long. MR COPPEL: Karen made the comment in the session with Hachette and the authors that the Terms of Reference had asked us to look at the issues associated with the implementation of removal of parallel import restrictions, but as I say, you’ve made a number of comments and you’ve mentioned that prices wouldn't be lower. You’ve made the point that there would be a hit to publishers that would lead to less books. You’ve made references to what’s happened in New Zealand and a lot of other submissions that made similar points. MS SUNDE: Yes.