It is good to see the press coverage of the battle between Kerry Stokes and the Board of West Australian Newspapers. For the first time in years, the big sticks used by some newspaper publishers against small business newsagents are exposed. Today’s Age reports the court action by a newsagent and more planned by others about delivery fees which have not increased for “about a decade”.
At last we read that newsagents in Western Australia have not had a home delivery fee increase in ten years. Memo to the folks at The Age: check your own track record. While you have permitted an increase, it is less than CPI and does not even allow for the considerable increase in fuel.
Newspaper publishers choke newsagents. They control the price of what we sell and the price we can put on services related to that product. They do not control our costs. Indeed, they actively increase our costs by forcing us to use out of date practices.
While some publishers are better than others, the control they exert over newsagents as a block undermines delivery businesses. Their controls deny us the opportunity to be entrepreneurial. We’re treated like servants, and paid like it.
While I am pleased to see the appalling treatment of newsagents given coverage in the wash of Kerry Stokes’ battle with WAN, newsagents need to remember how their colleagues were treated in Canberra when he owned The Canberra Times. If my memory is correct, this is when contractors were appointed to replace newsagents, unilaterally removing the home delivery of the newspaper from newsagenrts who had faithfully served the newspaper for decades.