I first met Peter Browne when he was editing a magazine called Australian Society; associated with the Brotherhood of St Laurence, it was a progressive monthly magazine of news and current affairs. Peter later went on to become publisher for the University of New South Wales Press and then moved to Swinburne University’s Institute of Social Research from where in 2008 he launched the monthly digital news magazine Inside Story. Browne has always been intensely interested in how societies work and what could make them work better and Inside Story was his vehicle to let Australia’s best journalists and thinkers tease out their ideas. No longer associated with Swinburne, Inside Story relaunched last year; it features pieces by Judith Brett, Margaret Simons, Tim Colebatch, and Peter Mares amongst others and is always interesting and relevant. I think it’s a terrific and important part of our media landscape. You can subscribe to it at insidestory.org.au and it’s free.

In late January the federal government released its new cultural policy, ‘Revive’, a five-year plan to renew and revive the cultural sector. It was generally well received by the arts community. Under previous governments arts policy had languished and much of the funding decision-making had been transferred away from the Australia Council to the Arts minister. Revive aims to restore lost funding and to introduce new funding to the sector. The policy, developed after consultation with the sector, is based on five pillars: First Nations First – recognising the centrality of First Nations stories to Australian culture; A Place for Every Story – ensuring all artists have the ability to share their stories; Centrality of the Artist – recognising and rewarding creative effort; Strong Cultural Infrastructure – providing support for the institutions that support our arts, culture and heritage; and, finally, Engaging the Audience.

Already, some announcements have been made. Authors already receive payments based on how often their books are borrowed from libraries, but that only applied to printed books – now it will apply to ebooks and audiobooks. Australia will have its first official Poet Laureate after 200 years. The Australia Council will be restructured as Creative Australia and have four subsidiary bodies: a First Nations-led Board, Music Australia, Writers Australia and the Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces. The management of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards has been criticised recently by some commentators and that will eventually pass to the new Writers Australia.

I was interested in the description of cultural infrastructure; while mentioning bricks and mortar’ buildings – including cinemas, performing arts centres, theatres, museums, archives, libraries, and galleries – it made no reference to bookshops, which I would argue are definitely part of our cultural infrastructure. The French have long recognised this and have a raft of measures to support a strong bookshop culture at local, regional, and federal levels. At a national level, they have just taken measures to combat the predatory pricing tactics of Amazon by introducing a mandatory delivery fee of 3 Euros. I hope that the new Writers Australia will include bookshops in its remit.

You should all pencil in some time off in April! Miles Franklin winner Alexis Wright has a new novel out, Praiseworthy. At 736 pages, it’s a major achievement by one of our greatest writers. Alexis will also be talking about her new work on the 13th of April – you can book your tickets here.