ALNA facilitates meeting between WA Premier and newsagents on Lotterywest refit costs and challenges

On February 1, 2017, Western Australian newsagents have an opportunity to meet with West Australian Premier Colin Barnett at a forum to discuss growing converse about the growing costs associated with the new corporate image Lotterywest requires agents to install.

This is an important meeting that every WA newsagent who sells lotteries should attend.

Click here to see the letter from ALNA to the Premier.

Click here to see the notice for the ALNA facilitated meeting.

The core issues are the cost of the refit and the lack of economic justification for the refit. When I first saw the proposed refit in September 2015, the anticipated costs were significantly less than is the case today. On today’s numbers, it is possible small business newsagents will not achieve a reasonable return on the capital expenditure. This is not how it was meant to be.

I support the ALNA work in this area and I urge all newsagency marketing groups, newsagency software companies and other groupings of newsagents to support it. In my own newsXpress group we have shared the details of the ALNA work, with ALNA permission, and encouraged WA newsXpress members to attend this meeting. While I will be overseas, my fellow newsXpress director will be attending the forum with the WA Premier.

If you are a newsagent in Western Australia and have completed the Lotterywest refit, you may have business performance data that could be useful to the ALNA work in this area. I urge you to make contact with Ben Kearney from ALNA on ben@alna.net.au to discuss the impact of the refit in your business.

This issue feeds into the Tatts refit issue as the challenges are the same. tatts is requiring small business newsagents to undertake a considerable level of capital expenditure without reasonable financial justification for the capital expenditure. While I am not a lawyer, I suspect the ACCC may have a view about the moves by Lotterywest and Tatts.

With lottery purchases moving online at a considerable rate, it is appropriate to question the level of capital expenditure being required by Lotterywest and Tatts. Required expenditure has to be fair, justified and appropriate to the expected market conditions and trends over the period of which the capital expenditure is expected to financial perform for the business.