Leigh wrote, "Our national identity went out the door when multiculturalism came in".

Master replies: No Leigh. "YOUR" identity went out the door. However, there remains the vast majority of Aussies who are not throwbacks to the 1950s, whose national identity is still VERY MUCH intact.

Australia has been multicultural for EVERY MINUTE since 1788. Our culture is, and has ALWAYS been, made up of many different races, original nationalities, religions, outlooks and philosophies. Good ol' Oz has NEVER been a mono culture, although they tried in the 50s with the notorious White Australia immigration policy. That failed, and rightly so.

What becomes important is not so much the loss of fiction books from Australian authors, but the loss of any non-fiction books from Australian authors.

The non-fiction books have valuable intellectual property, and the Australian public would have paid for that intellectual property, because the Australian public would have paid for the education of the author.

This is particularly the case for textbooks. I have heard of estimates that within 10 years there will be no textbooks in this country written by Australian authors. The schools and universities already use about 100% imported software, and the intellectual property of that software belongs to another country.

If the schools and universities start using 100% imported textbooks (very, very likely), then there will be no Australian intellectual property left inside our education systems. The public pay for the buildings in the schools and universities, but the intellectual property inside those buildings belongs to another country.

I wonder who gets the best deal out of that?

Neither this article nor anything else I have read explains how permitting parallel imports of books will reduce incomes of Australian authors.
It will reduce the income of Australian publishers - mostly subsidiaries of overseas publishers - and should reduce the price of books.
I cannot see any other major consequence although clearly publishers have convinced authors that it will hurt them.

What was the culture before multiculturalism came in.
Does AU have a culture, was there ever a culture.
The Aboriginal is the only one that can lay claim to that event.
AU has 200 cultures or more. The original aboriginal land only had one culture. The original wording of this thread borders on raceism.

Unfortunately Ken Nielsen, I think if publishers start to suffer reduced profits, they may well wish to reduce the royalties they pay authors. So authors will suffer.

This is market forces at work. While I am no free market fanatic, it's not realistic to expect people to buy what they don't want to read, so perhaps writers need to:

A) look at new markets / opportunites to use their skills
B) write more commercially palatable stories
C) supplement their income from another source (I'm sure many already do this).

The world changes and we all have to adapt to it in one way or another. Writers / authors don't deserve special treatment.