Just a few months after signing agreements to unify newsagent associations, the national body, the Australian Newsagents’ Federation, had done a dummy spit and told newsagents in NSW and QLD to quit the state bodies and join the national body. The ANF says the NSW and QLD State Associations are duds. I’d copy the dummy spit email here if it were not, in my view, defamatory. In the same email, the ANF announces that ANF CEO, Rayma Creswell has resigned because of “her inability to continue to work with industry Associations representing NSW and Qld”.
The road to unified national representation of newsagents has been long and rocky. Every day the national and state associations continue brawling is another day of opportunity to those who compete with newsagents. The communication from the ANF could have been more professionally written and therefore more likely to be read and digested.
The ANF and state associations have signed agreements which lay out how they are to co-exist. Newsagents would be well served if all parties adhered to the agreements. In the meantime, the ANF Board could consider hiring a CEO with solid national association experience.
There seems to be a lot of talk about national unification, however, having a division is good when NANA and QNF are the only associations willing to fight the bigger powers such as News Ltd who continue to constrain Newsagents. Without these associations perhaps there would be no debate? And isn’t debate a good thing?
Perhaps it is because ANF is trying to get funding from News Ltd for its new training program that it is trying to abate Newsagent’s concerns about these 3 year contracts?
I’m wondering if the ANF actually have Newsagent’s interests at heart???