It's the economy stupid!

I find myself in the perplexing situation of actually wanting to purchase a book on the Australian economy. I scored A grades in my economics classes in college and actually enjoyed the study, but have never thought to myself until now "hmmm....I need to go spend $40 on a book about economic policy". I know its a function of coming from the US to Perth, but I've lived overseas before and never found myself as I do now, wondering from where exactly some of the (to my mind) odd economic decisions spring. Its different here for some reason. Case in point - the price of books. Books are crazy expensive here. A used and somewhat soiled minor paperback will still run $10US. New it's closer to $20US and Mike just paid $40US for a hardcover book of popular fiction. The reason books are so dear is because there are laws on the books (ha!) preventing their import. To my mind the poor state of the three local libraries I've been to attest to the prohibitive prices of books. To make it even more depressing, the main library for my general area of town did have a wall of new books displayed. But you can't check them out for a month. Yep - they just put them up to taunt you. The patrons are supposed to put the books on reserve and will I suppose eventually get their hands on the desired tome sometime in the next 6-12 months depending upon demand. It would be hard to get excited about reading all the books in an authors series when you know the choice is to spend a fortune, or wait an age to have your thirst slacked. So I'm really curious to know what other measures the authorities have deemed necessary to serve and protect the Australian economy. I know that the economies of scale countries with smaller land masses and/or larger populations enjoy are not options, so I want to know what the various governments have seized upon as solutions to growing and protecting industry and employment. I guess it's a whole different ball of wax.