While car makers battle cheap imports and farmers battle a drought, newsagents are battling their own Government which appears intent on wrecking small family businesses. Despite robust representations, the Government has facilitated the push of the retail network it wons to take more revenue from newsagents. This is a scandal.
This new catalogue from Australia Post offers further evidence. Here we have over 800 government owned and protected retail outlets pushing deeper into categories previously well served by newsagents. Not one page of this sixteen page catalogue offers postage product (except for a subtle reference to postage) yet it relies heavily on the protected Australia Post brand.
I am all for competition, but not driven by a government owned and protected retail network which is operating, in my view, outside the provisions of the Postal Act.
Every dollar taken by an Australia Post government owned store for stationery, greeting cards, colouring books computer media and calendars is a dollar missing from a small business competitor. Where is the economic sense in Government shifting this revenue from private enterprise to its operation?