Dear Australian Retailers

Your recent campaign to get GST levied on all Internet transactions has some rather major logical flaws.

1. Your prices are much more than 10% higher than overseas prices.

It's interesting that Angus & Robertson and Borders are part of your campaign. The book business is probably the easiest area where the massive price differences can be shown, thanks to the awesome Booko service which allows consumers to find the cheapest source for books, taking into account delivery charges and exchange rate fluctuations.

Cheapest foreign sale, AUD$10.61 delivered.
Cheapest Australian sale, AUD$18 delivered.
Price difference: 41%.
Price difference without delivery: 8% (though to be fair, the cheapest price without freight was 44% cheaper).

Cheapest foreign sale, AUD$38.15 delivered.
Cheapest Australian sale, AUD$56.39 delivered.
Price difference: 32%.
Price difference without delivery: 58% (clearly The Nile loads their "free" freight into the book price).

Cheapest foreign sale, AUD$18.33 delivered.
Cheapest Australian sale, AUD$25.57 delivered.
Price difference: 28%.
(both sources load freight into the price)

Cheapest foreign sale, AUD$4.02 delivered.
Cheapest Australian sale, AUD$18.04 (for the Australian edition).
Price difference: 78%.
(both sources load freight into the price)

Here we see two examples of books that are only really of interest to an Australian audience cheaper overseas, a science fiction novel with international release also cheaper and a mass market bestseller. All dramatically cheaper bought from overseas. My experience having ordered from Australian online retailers is that they also take much longer to deliver than the overseas vendors. 6-10 weeks for delivery from Australia versus 2-6 weeks from Book Depository US or UK.

So book retailers, come back when the difference between your prices and those overseas is less than 10%, and your service is at least on par.

Now I know that the book industry is difficult. The local publishers are absolute idiots, and the sooner they die the better for everyone involved. But what about consumer electronics?

Example 1: D-Link Boxee
Price difference: 34%.

Example 2: LG BD570 Blu Ray Player
Price difference: 38%.

So even if they charged GST on these sales, they'd still be cheaper overseas. Why's that Gerry?  Should it be a legal requirement that Australian consumers subsidize your horseracing hobby?

2. Your online sites are woeful

Have a look at the sites of the retailers sponsoring this advertisement and see how many will actually sell you a product online, or have most of their product range online. Now before I did this little audit, I figured none of the retailers listed would sell anything substantial online. Surprisingly, there's more than I expected selling their full range online. Interestingly the fashion sector seems to have gone into this in a big way, and fashion is the sector many have regarded as very difficult to sell to people outside of stores.

But the big, noisy players in retail, the ones complaining the loudest about competition from overseas online stores, have conspicuously crap online presences. David Jones, Harvey Norman, Myer and Target hang your heads in shame!

Retailer Online sales? Full range online?
Angus & Robertson yes yes
Borders yes yes
David Jones no no
Dotti no no (but an impressive effort)
French Connection yes yes
Harvey Norman no no
House no no
Jacqui E no maybe?
Jay Jays yes yes
Just Jeans yes yes
Mimco yes yes
Myer yes no
Nine West no maybe
Peter Alexander yes no
Portmans no no
Seed yes no
Smiggle yes yes
Steve Madden yes yes
Superchef Warehouse no no
Target no no
Witchery yes yes

3. Collection would cost more than it would raise

The final nail in the coffin here is that the cost to collect GST on incoming mail, by opening packages, working out the cost, then having a mechanism to collect the money, would likely cost more than the tax that would actually be collected. Making it useless as a tax revenue. Let's remember that raising tax revenue for government and its services is, after all, the point of taxation. It's not designed as a way to protect the revenue of local businesses!

Of course, the retailers would suggest that in addition to the tax being levied, there also be a "collection fee" added to cover these costs. This would handily bring the price you pay online somewhere closer to their ridiculously overpriced goods. How convenient. And they wouldn't even have to compete on price!

Alexis Petridis' perfect New Year's Eve playlist

Chime Orbital

Useful because a) it's great b) has vaguely Big Ben-ish bells on it, but also because playing it marks the inexorable passing of time: watch ex-ravers of a certain age "have it large" before sheepishly heading home at 1am to relieve the babysitter.

via guardian.co.uk

Sounds scarily familiar...

Peats Ridge Festival 2010

Holly and I took Louis to his first outdoor music festival, and his first time camping over New Year. Peats Ridge Festival is held to the North of Sydney in a valley near the Hawkesbury River and bills itself as something of a sustainable music festival. It's got mostly Australian artists, though this year they had the Shout Out Louds who I'd previously seen at Roskilde in 2006 (yes, follow that link - the photo is awesome).

We didn't know quite how it'd turn out, whether Louis would cope with dust, camping, noise and heat.  Turns out we did fine.

Bands I really enjoyed, but expected to enjoy, were Shout Out Louds, Decoder Ring and PVT. Always awesome bands.

New discoveries:
  • The Seabellies: very talented multi-instrumentalist band. Curious to hear their recorded output, if I can find somewhere to buy it that isn't iTunes.
  • Fishing: very difficult to categorize, probably closest example is some of Hudson Mohawke's output (Polyfolk Blues in particular). Amazing live mashing up of their tracks.
  • Jinja Safari: Holly saw these guys so I don't really know anything about them.
  • Trentemøller: not terribly impressed with his recordings, but his set leading up to New Year's midnight was great.


But music was only part of the fun. We spent a lot of time trying to stay cool, with temperatures heading towards 30 and over in the day. We spent a fair amount of time cooling down in the little creek running through the site.  We lazed around.  Ate some yummy food.  Drank some beers.


The really fun part was last night with a dress up night.  Louis and I have these absolutely amazing costumes made by my awesome friend Linn Linn.  Loads of fun.

All in all, a nice little festival.  Good relaxed atmosphere, very kid-friendly. The "eco" label can be a little grating, especially when they stiff you an extra $1 "container deposit" on drinks and then make it difficult to actually get your dollar back.  But I think I'd definitely go again.  We had lots of fun.

Loads more photos are on my SmugMug.

In case you haven't had cute overload yet, here's a video of Louis dancing to Lolo Lovina:

Peats Ridge update before New Year

Festival is great, if insanely hot. Tomorrow is forecast to hit 37 so we're likely to be packed and on our way pretty early.

Disaster struck this morning: broken thong. Being a bloody hippy festival, there's magical rocks for sale, but you think I can buy a pair if regular, petrochemical, industrial thongs? Fortunately Holly's feet are near my size and she's wearing her trustifarian sandals.

Last night I saw Decoder Ring and PVT. Good as usual. Awesome band discoveries were The Seabellies (very slick) and Fishing (kinda Hudson Mohawke wonkiness done mostly live).

Tonight Louis and I ate dressing up with amazing costumes Linn Linn made. Should be very cute.

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Peats Ridge Festival

We've had a lovely day so far. This is watching Washington in the late afternoon.

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I Hate Math! (Not After This, You Won't) : Krulwich Wonders… : NPR

Vi Hart calls herself "a recreational mathemusician currently living on Long Island." She talks faster than a machine gun, loves math, and draws like a dream. Her newest video: "Doodling in Math Class: Snakes + Graphs" is eye-popping.

Vi Hart

Source: YouTube

via npr.org

Wow this woman is amazing. Her videos are just incredible, if you can keep up. The surrounding article is also worth a read.

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Wikileaks: major news reports miss the major point

Is it just me or are the major news services missing the whole point of the Wikileaks US embassy cables?  Sure it's a bit embarrassing for the Yanks that their data all got into the public domain, but I'm sure all the players know these kinds of unflattering accounts are a regular part of diplomacy.

The really important thing here is that if a disgruntled employee with access to this data was able to very easily gather the whole database and leak it to Wikileaks, how many other sources are there leaking it less publicly?  There's upwards of three million people who have the appropriate security clearance. Do you think some of them might be financially distressed (given the recent GFC) and be open to a little cash incentive to leak it somewhere else?  Or have some other easy method to apply leverage (especially given "Don't ask. Don't tell.") So the question is probably less which intelligence agencies have been regularly receiving this data and more which ones haven't! Of course, their versions wouldn't have had the redactions of personal identifiers and the like that we see in the Wikileaks data.