Sunny Garden

Dear Politician,

It looks as though you think it's reasonable that when Australians buy my books in future, they'll be adding 10% for you. Interestingly, that'll mean you'll be getting the same percentage as me, the writer. I know you value books. I know you know how hard authors have to work to write them. So I'm assuming that if you and I get around the same cut, you'll be prepared to do your half of the writing. In which case, the standard had better be a lot higher than most of the stuff you come out with in parliament.

Thank you for showing us that not everyone has what it takes to write a book. But we hadn't realised how much more prepared we might be if we'd got ourselves a maths degree, postgraduate qualifications in tax law, a crystal ball or a very broad interpretation of the word promise.

Thank you Meg Lees for your National Press Club address before the last election, in which you said 'a tax on books is a tax on learning and literature', though we didn't at the time realise that your next line 'We will not vote for a tax on books' was quite as open to interpretation as it now seems. On behalf of Australian writers, Australian readers and/or Democrat voters, I'd like to take this chance to apologise for taking it literally.

Thank you also for talking about the Irish model, until you had to rename your version the Australian model because the Irish don't tax books, do they?

Thank you for talking about grants for struggling writers. Perhaps that at least shows that you know you're going to be making us struggle if you tax books.

Thank you for talking about a book bounty, though you didn't have to make it quite such a surprise. Someone - even just one of you - could have told us about it before the last election, and then we could have shown you whether we liked it or not. That's a concept called democracy. Perhaps you should look it up in a book.

Thank you for having enough confidence in Australian writing that you think we can say everything we need to in four years. You've only talked about a bounty lasting four years, so I assume that's what you had in mind. It might surprise you to know that some of us thought we'd be coming up with new things to say well beyond then.

Thank you for giving us four years to retrain, should we decide it's not worth the trouble any more. Thank you for making education tax free, but could you possibly see your way clear to dropping the stupid tax you're planning to impose on the books that are an intrinsic part of it.

Thank you for being one of the few governments in the world to come up with a tax reform so imaginative that it makes soft drinks cheaper and books more expensive. Perhaps, in the future, your writers can promise you an improvement in the quality of the text on the bottles.

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Sunny Garden is designed, written and maintained by Liz Perkins, in cooperation with Nick Earls and Penguin Books. Any questions about Sunny Garden should be directed to Liz

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