As a matter of urgency the printing industry must speak with one voice, which is able to articulate a vision for the industry and suggest practical steps to be taken, Kim Carr, minister for innovation, industry, science and research told the CEO forum in Sydney yesterday.
Also speaking at the forum, Bernard Cassell, managing director of CPI said it would appear that the government had somewhat neglected the printing industry despite the fact around 80 cents out of each dollar invested in the industry stays within Australia.Cassell also called on the government to assist the industry to rebut the false environmental claims being made against it.
He said, “Paper itself has a positive environmental impact and this is what we need to get behind. We are up against the environmental industry, which refuses to give up the symbolic image of a tree being harvested.”
Meanwhile, in his presentation to industry CEOs, Minister Carr said printing should be build into a modern industry that provides quality jobs, however the industry had a responsibility to meet the government half way.
He said, “That is what the Printing Industry Working Group was set up for. Of course my department and I will do everything we can to help the group succeed. But it is the industry’s job to come up with the ideas, and it is the industry’s job to sell them.”
The Minister continued, “If a partnership is going to work, it must be based on mutual respect and mutual obligation. It must be a relationship between equals – a relationship to which both sides contribute.”
He also touched on the industry’s concerns about the Productivity Commission’s recent report on the parallel importation of books. He said the report was with the Government, which will be making a decision on it sooner rather than later.
Carr said while he was unable to comment on the Government’s deliberations, there was no denying that the commission had raised a number of interesting questions such as what did it mean for innovation, industry, science and research? And what are the costs and what are the benefits?
The Minister adds, “One frequently cited benefit of removing restrictions on parallel imports is that book prices will fall. However it is only fair to say that the Productivity Commission is extremely cautious about this.
“Nowhere does it assert that we will see price cuts across the board. It merely floats the possibility that there ‘would be opportunities, from time to time, for the importation and sale of at least a subset of books at lower prices from abroad.’”
