The Australian Library Journal

Prime Minister's core promise: all library purchases to be slashed by 10%...

[Editorial] John Levett
Plus ca change... Ten years or so ago, we wrote a disparaging editorial in which the word 'curmudgeon' was brought into play, about the then Federal Treasurer, and his wish to put a sales tax on books. At that stage what was proposed was a tax variable across a range of goods, with books coming in for two-and-one-half per cent. Little enough, you might say, and a quarter of that which is now sanctioned by the 'mandate' which the newly [and barely] re-elected Coalition government claims. That former Federal Treasurer is now of course, Prime Minister, and appears to have learned little in the intervening years. The 'tax reform' proposals may have eventual merit if they can be examined when the confusions and dust aroused by electoral claim and counter-claim have settled somewhat, but no-one in our profession should be sanguine about the application of the tax to books: partly because they are books with all the connotations that that word has for some of us, and because we are, in theory at any rate, opposed to restrictions, fiscal or political, on access to basic information. There are other, broader, reasons for objecting to such an imposition, however, and they have to do with more than emotion or narrow cultural sensitivities. Such a tax is inimical to the concept of a clever [we would prefer 'intelligent'] country; society exists for other reasons than to be merely a laboratory for economic experiment.

Fiscal pragmatism can balance the books in the same way as a trained seal can balance a beach ball, but it is plainly not able to simultaneously keep in balance the needs and demands of society. In the disruption and deterioration in the social fabric which confronts those exposed [including many in our profession] to the unfettered, conscience-less application of it, there is ample evidence that a preoccupation with the current fiscal dogma can distract 'leaders' and policy makers from more important issues. At present we are also experiencing the consequences of applying the apparent efficiencies offered by the unlucky coincidence of a new technology and the abdication of a broader social responsibility, together with the impact of an economic theory untempered and untrammelled by vision or obligation other than to 'the shareholders'. The 'efficiencies' thus obtained, largely by widespread sackings and 'downsizing', with no evident improvement in actual management practices [vide BHP] are illusory, partial and temporary, in that society is an interconnected whole: if we build a culture which is said to be based on a market economy, then it is deeply illogical and dangerous to exclude large segments of it from participating in that culture by depriving them of the wherewithal to become customers in it. The danger is compounded by persisting with an education system which continues to be predicated on the 19th century assumption that the function of schooling is to prepare workers for employment, if there are to be reductions in the availability of jobs to the point where a substantial minority of school graduates have absolutely no chance of finding the paid work which would enable them to function constructively in a market-based society. All the ancillary forces of the market, especially advertising and the creation of a consuming desire for goods that can legally only be obtained by purchase, by the exercise of choice based on disposable income, continue to play on those for whom the notion of an income sufficient to render any part of it disposable is merely risible. Only a lunatic would insist that on the one hand people should be told that they musthave such and such a commodity in order to be happy and fulfilled, and on the other hand deliberately move to deprive them of the wherewithal to acquire that easeful commodity. Widespread anger, discontent and entirely understandable departures from accepted behaviour norms are the inevitable consequence.

How do we get to this point from a projected ten per cent impost [unmitigated by the removal of wholesale or other taxes, because never before has this society thought it appropriate to apply them] on the price of books and periodicals? By our assertion that society is not a series of unrelated, sterile and insulated cells, but an interconnected and inter-affective whole; it is a market axiom that if you increase price, you decrease demand, and if you decrease demand for and the availability of books, you reduce the flow of ideas in a society and thus tend to render it narrower and less open. In society no less than in farming, tendencies to monoculture are dangerous; if we wanted an illustration of the potency of such an assertion, we need look no further than the implications raised by the emergence of Ms Hanson's proprietary company for restricting the dissemination of knowledge and the distribution of ideas. If once a government is allowed to apply such a tax without the benefit of counter-argument, we are consenting to a form of restriction and censorship, albeit of a fiscal rather than intellectual kind but no less effective for that; the application of such a restriction ought to be abhorrent to those who still believe in the ideological and historical foundations of our discipline. But to date, the profession has been resoundingly silent on this issue. This is a most dangerous vacuum, for in the political mode which operates in this country, lack of opposition is taken for agreement: as Redgum once sang 'If you don't fight, you lose...'

In this issue, we acknowledge our debt to Australian library history: the six papers reproduced here were originally given at Coming together; the Seventh Australian Library History Forum which took place at the RMIT on the 12 October 1996. They were subsequently published by the Ancora Press, that admirable corollary of the Department of Librarianship Archives and Records at Monash University, where the original forum was conceived and mounted, and it is a pleasure to have been allowed the opportunity to give them further exposure in these pages. The papers admirably demonstrate the phenomenon of historical continuity, and although the matters and personalities which they describe lie [but not invariably] in the past, they have much to reveal and will repay careful reading. We also publish with great pleasure two new poems, both by librarians. Added to that there is the usual bumper collection of reviews, critical and analytical.

It only remains for us to thank our many contributors and correspondents [not all of whom, alas, were prepared to allow us to publish their comments], our reviewers and their energetic editor and Roos supporter, Dr Gary Gorman, and to convey our deep appreciation for the tolerance and competence of the staff of ALIA's Publications Office, Emma Davis-Bell, Sharon Cunningham and Robert Umphelby, who were led, inspired and whipped-on by the able polymath Ivan Trundle. Other members of ALIA's staff under Marie Murphy handle our subscription base with aplomb.

And finally to Virginia Walsh, executive director of ALIA, the editor's appreciation for her totally hands-off approach to ALJ [although at times she must have been sorely tried] and her support for its editor.