Small Business Still Suffers

This item was lifted from Mark Fletcher's blog at http://www.towersystems.com.au/


A Government out of touch on small business
Posted by mark at 06:42 AM
In 865 Federal Government owned Australia Post shops right now you can see how serious the government is about small business. Leveraging the conflicted positions 100% ownership of Australia Post and controlling legislation that governs Australia Post, the Government has ensured its annual profit windfall. Over the last eleven years this windfall has come at a significant cost to small business including newsagents.
Take the current twelve page Australia Post brochure: page after page of stationery items which, on my reading of the Act, fall outside activity permitted by the Act under which Australia Post operates. My newsagency, like any newsagency competing directly with a Government owned Australia Post retail outlet, fights every day for stationery business. Newsagents have been in stationery since the 1880s. Australia Post has beefed up in this category during the last eleven years.
That Australia Post government owned stores so aggressively and blatantly target independent small business newsagents is evidence of how the Government views small business.
Helen Coonan, the Minister in the government responsible for Australia Post will say that the legislation con trolls Australia Post - as if to wash her hands of the situation. Her Government controls the legislation and can prove its small business credentials by taking the Government owned stores out of this direct competition.
Australia Post has an unfair advantage in that it uses its protected monopoly of postage services to drag traffic to their retail outlets. Newsagents do not have this luxury, it costs us far more to land customers in our stores than Australia Post.

Our additional notes:

We would like to add that we are suffering as a small family business from lack of government support and in this case, unfair government support of what we think is an illegal situation. Many approaches have been brushed aside by a succession of government ministers but we warn that as a group we have many many employees, family and friends. The current politicians are so far removed from reality, we will have to change the situation to get fair treatment for small business in this matter. Each newsagency is an integral part of its local community and we are being forced to have to fight disinterested politicians to survive. Now seems to be a good time to "kick some bums".

Maxine and Peter