National Library of Australia - Home page
NLA News - home February 2005 Volume XV Number 5

ASSISTING AUSTRALIAN WRITERS

Ann-Mari Jordens looks at the history of the Public Lending Right and Educational Lending Right Schemes

click to enlarge

William Edwin Pidgeon (1909–1981)
Portrait of Colin Simpson [c.1940]
oil on board painting; 30.3 x 27.6 cm (s.m.)
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an5487739

Australian writers are rarely big spenders. While their income from royalty cheques is unpredictable and generally short-lived, their bills arrive with depressing regularity. Only the very brave attempt to support themselves by full-time writing. While we Australians generously fund and celebrate the achievements of our sportsmen and women, we only rarely acknowledge and support our authors whose books reflect and interpret our continually changing culture through their unmistakably Australian characters and settings. Instead of buying their books, we often wait until we can borrow them from our local public library.

From the mid-1960s, the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) has determinedly, and ultimately successfully, lobbied successive Commonwealth governments for a Public Lending Right (PLR) scheme. Since 1974, this scheme has compensated Australian authors, compilers, translators, editors, illustrators and publishers for royalties lost in sales to the public because their books are freely available in public libraries. In the 1990s the ASA campaigned again, for an Educational Lending Right (ELR) scheme to extend this compensation to books held in the libraries of educational institutions. Such a scheme was agreed to by the Keating Labor Government in 1994, abandoned by the Howard Government in 1996, and finally funded for four years in 2000 as part of a compensation package to the book industry for the imposition of the GST on books. This year, funding was renewed for a further four years. Authors eligible for royalties whose books are used in school, university and other tertiary educational libraries, benefit from this scheme.

The National Library of Australia always welcomes suggestions for interviews to enhance its Oral History Collection, and was delighted when ASA President Libby Gleeson asked it in 2000 to record, preserve and make widely available to researchers, first-hand accounts of the efforts of those involved in lobbying for and administering the PLR and ELR schemes. To date, 13 such interviews have been conducted with men and women who have made important contributions to these schemes in a wide range of roles since the 1960s.

It was not unrealistic for Australian writers to look for government support. The Commonwealth has helped Australian authors since1908, when the Deakin Government established the Commonwealth Literary Fund. Inspired by the plight of the family of the author Victor Daley, it was initially a benevolent fund intended to help ill or aged authors no longer able to support themselves, the impoverished families of dead authors, or established writers too poor to continue writing. By 1939, following agitation by the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) and the former Prime Minister J.H. Scullin, the Fund’s budget was trebled and its scope expanded to include the award of annual fellowships and grants to writers, assistance to publishers, support for several literary journals, and the promotion of Australian literature. Its original committee was replaced by a parliamentary committee headed by Prime Minister R.G. Menzies, which eventually included a representative of the three major political parties in Federal Parliament, assisted by an advisory board of writers, academics and publishers. The Fund’s functions were taken over by the Literature Board in 1973.

Those interviewed about their roles in the PLR and ELR schemes fall into three broad categories—staff and office holders of the Australian Society of Authors, Commonwealth Government public servants, and members of the PLR Committee. When the ASA was formed in 1963, Sydney poet Jill Hellyer became its first (unpaid) secretary. Her interview recreates the characters and controversies of the early years of the ASA, and the origins of its campaign for PLR from 1967, when author Colin Simpson was given the PLR portfolio. An excellent record-keeper, Jill is now the institutional memory of the ASA and she has given her manuscripts recording its history to the National Library. Interviews with her successor as Executive Secretary in 1972, Deirdre Hill, and Deirdre’s successor in 1981, Margo Hilton, carry on the story of the establishment and development of PLR up to 1984, and supplement Deirdre’s book A Writers’ Rights …, on the history of the ASA.

Author Barbara Jefferis’ interview describes her efforts as President of the ASA, 1973–76, to lobby parliamentarians of all persuasions. The ASA commissioned and partly funded a survey of writers’ earnings to demonstrate their need for Commonwealth assistance. She calmed the fears of librarians who were overwhelmingly opposed to a PLR scheme following a skilful campaign led by the Chair of the Library Association of Australia, Allan Horton. The ASA gradually broke down this opposition, she said, ‘by talking ourselves blind’. Barbara became ASA representative on the PLR Committee in the 1980s.

Children’s author Libby Gleeson joined the ASA in 1984, and has served on its management committee as executive member, Chair and Treasurer. From 1984 to 1996 she was authors’ representative on the PLR Committee, and successfully campaigned to have the social and cultural aspects of PLR, as well as its compensatory aim, written into the Public Lending Right Act 1985. Both her interview, and that of fellow children’s author Nadia Wheatley, are invaluable as an account of the ASA’s long and ultimately successful lobbying for ELR. (Children’s book authors are by far the major beneficiaries of the scheme.)

After the decision of the Whitlam Government in 1974 to fund the PLR scheme, it came under the control of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in Canberra, although its office was first located in Sydney. Valery Evans, originally stenographer to Literature Board member and Chair Nancy Keesing from 1973, became Secretary to the first PLR Committee from 1974 to 1985 and gives an insight into the Board’s workings in that period.

Alan Johnson was Administrator to the PLR Committee in Sydney, 1977–90, following its transfer from the Literature Board to the Australian Council for the Arts under the Fraser Government. He describes a period of exciting cultural change in Arts administration. He referred to the extension of PLR benefits to the heirs of deceased authors as the ‘Manoly provision’ (named for Patrick White’s partner Manoly Lascaris), as it commenced following Patrick White’s death and reflected the growing acceptance of gay relationships. Johnson’s interview describes the politics as well as the administrative structures of PLR, and will be of considerable interest to historians of Australia’s administrative as well as cultural history.

The history of the PLR scheme reflects the development of the use of computers in Australia. Bob Lane was a computer expert in the Australian Heritage Commission, who knew nothing about the PLR scheme when he was appointed in 1990 to replace Alan Johnson as PLR Administrator, and to moveits administration from Sydney to Canberra— a decision strongly opposed by the ASA. His interview describes the diplomatic skills of Warren Horton, Director-General of the National Library, and PLR Committee Chair in 1991, who soon quelled the authors’ fears and mistrust and restored harmony to the situation. Authors Australia-wide quickly learned that they could discuss their problems freely, and ask advice from Lane’s staff Margaret Brookes and Paul Bootes. Their interviews trace the development of ELR from the aborted Keating scheme of 1994 to the current scheme introduced in 2000, which Paul Bootes still administers.

Since 1974 the PLR Committee— whose role includes determining claimants’ eligibility, approving payments, and advising, making recommendations and reporting annually to the responsible Minister—has included representatives of authors, publishers and libraries. From 1975 to 1990, Anthony Ketley was the nominated delegate of the Director-General of the National Library of Australia to the Committee. His interview gives a fascinating insight into the reasons behind the Australian Library Association’s opposition to the PLR scheme, and the efforts of himself and the Committee’s first Chairman Dick Hall to change librarians’ attitudes. He astutely describes the reasons behind the transfer of the ASA’s administration from Sydney to Canberra, and the difficulties this presented to Alan Johnson as its Administrator. The main reason the scheme was so complex, he believed, was the decision to include publishers.

Patrick Gallagher of Allen & Unwin, publishers’ representative on the Committee from 1992 to 1996, gives a publisher’s perspective on the work of the Committee. He describes the generally harmonious way it dealt with the major issues confronting it in relation to both the PLR and the ELR schemes in the early 1990s, and ends his interview by describing his efforts early this year on behalf of the Australian Publishers Association to lobby the government to refund the ELR scheme. ‘It reflects very well on the importance of literature to Australian life,’ he concluded.

The Australian PLR scheme is seen as a model by countries overseas, and no other country has a comprehensive ELR scheme. Although the government’s records documenting their side of the history will not be available to researchers for many years, vivid first-hand accounts are already available from the National Library’s Oral History Collection. They describe from a wide variety of perspectives the evolution of the government’s reasons for funding Australian authors, and the role of the ASA in achieving this change. While still acknowledging the need to compensate book creators for royalties lost because their books are freely available in public and educational libraries, the government now conceives both schemes more broadly as enriching Australian culture by encouraging the growth and development of Australian writing and publishing.

For further information on either the PLR or ELR scheme, contact the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts,
Lending Rights Unit
GPO Box 3241
Canberra ACT 2601

Telephone: (02) 6271 1650
Freecall: 1800 672 842
Email: plr.mail@dcita.gov.au or elr.mail@dcita.gov.au
Website: www.dcita.gov.au/lendingrights

ANN-MARI JORDENS is a widely-published Canberra-based historian whose works include Redefining Australians (1995) and Alien to Citizen (1997). She also conducts interviews for the National Library’s Oral History Section.

click to enlarge

Portrait of F.J. Donahue and Victor Daley [between 1880 and 1900]
2 b&w photographs; 13.2 x 9.4 cm. on mount. 21.3 x 16.3 cm
Part of Australian Literary Society photograph collection
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an23556108

click to enlarge

Hazel De Berg, 1913–1984
Portrait of Deidre Hill, 1982
b&w photograph; 12.4 x 8.3 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3302935

click to enlarge

Jill Hellyer at her book launch of Song of the Humpback Whales on 9/10/1981
Papers of Jill Hellyer,
Manuscript Collection
MS 6814/2/9

click to enlarge

Ruth Maddison
Ken Searle and Nadia Wheatley at Apollo Bay, 1995
gelatin silver photograph; 41 x 29 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an14142207

click to enlarge

Jacqueline Mitelman
Nancy Keesing, 1982
gelatin silver photograph; 40.4 x 30.5 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an20003972

click to enlarge

Libby Gleeson
Photograph courtesy Libby Gleeson

Public Lending Right Scheme

1956 First suggested to Prime Minister R.G. Menzies by Chairman of the Commonwealth Literary Fund, Sir Archibald Grenfell Price.

1966 Submission by author John Kiddell to Federal Cabinet through Prime Minister H. Holt to make PLR part of the Liberal Party policy at its Annual Convention in 1968 is rejected.

1967 The ASA establishes a PLR portfolio headed by Colin Simpson.

1973 A Committee of Inquiry, under Literature Board Chairman Geoffrey Blainey, plans the administrative structure of the PLR.

1974 Prime Minister G. Whitlam announces the PLR scheme to apply from 1 April 1974; first payments to authors with at least 50 copies of their work in a carefully selected range of public libraries Australia-wide to be made by the end of June 1974. Authors Fund Committee appointed and attached to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

1975 Authors Fund transferred to the Australia Council in Sydney.

1980 Responsibility for the PLR scheme transferred to the Department of Home Affairs in Canberra, although it physically remained in Sydney.

1985 Public Lending Right Act enacted.

1987 PLR Act comes into effect and the PLR Committee is formally established.

1988 An attempt to move the PLR administration to Canberra thwarted by the ASA.

1990 The PLR administration is transferred to Canberra and co-located with the rest of the Arts Branch in the Department of the Arts, Sport, the Environment, Tourism and Territories.

1992 Copyright Agency funds the Guldberg report on the feasibility of an ELR scheme, and the ASA establishes an ELR portfolio in addition to its PLR portfolio. It begins a letter-writing campaign to the Minister for the Arts advocating ELR.

1994 The Keating Government gives approval in principle to an ELR scheme in its Creative Nation document, with a budget of $1m. Planning begins in the Department of the Arts for its introduction the following year.

1996 ELR omitted from the first Costello budget (Howard Government).

2000-01 ELR introduced as part of the Australian Government’s Book Industry Plan to compensate authors, illustrators, compilers, translators, editors and publishers for their books held in libraries in schools, TAFEs and universities. Funding of $38m over four years is provided.

2004 The Federal Budget provides a further $44m for ELR for the next four years. There is no legislative support for the ELR.

Back to NLA News Index Back to February Issue Back to NLA Home Page
NLA News - home

To order a particular issue of the NLA News e-mail nlasales@nla.gov.au
or join the Friends of the National Library of Australia and receive a copy each month by mail.