Broadly speaking, there had been a move away from university involvement in supporting literary magazines in the 1980s and 1990s. In terms of support for book publishing, university presses were declining in number as the text-book market (particularly in the humanities) was undercut by course readers for students, and the corporatisation of the universities meant that idealism was not cost-effective. There had been upsurges in activity, such as the University of Queensland Press's program of local-fiction publishing in the 1970s under the management of Frank Thompson, but university presses largely abandoned local fiction until Heat magazine, through Ivor Indyk and Giramondo Publishing, was conceived in 1996 in the Writing and Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney. In 2005, UWA Publishing announced a plan to publish a new series of literary fiction from post-graduate students in Australian creative writing courses, and also in the mid-2000s, Central Queensland University Press published a range of fiction and non-fiction titles (largely regional histories) under the idiosyncratic guidance of David Myers.

Sam Martin has claimed that this is evidence of active involvement by universities (‘Publish or perish’ n.p.). In my view, however, the reality is one of declining responsibility for community involvement despite the examples Martin cites, as they are stories of wilful individuals such as Thompson and Indyk pushing particular agendas. In terms of the literary magazines, the University of Melbourne was still involved with Meanjin, but by the early 2000s its publishing arrangement had changed. At the same time, Westerly was publishing less and less at the University of Western Australia; Southerly was still at the University of Sydney; Island was loosely associated with the University of Tasmania; Victoria University was involved with Overland with in-kind support; and Griffith University made a bold move with the Griffith Review. Other than that, the trade conditions in book publishing had changed and idealism was confined to groups outside universities. The rise of marketing departments resulted in the general view of ‘what was in it for us?’ and number-crunching over enrolment levels. Looking closely, none of the newer universities apart from Griffith University (which was started in the late 1960s) were involved with any of the new magazines, even though they were enrolling thousands of creative writing students.