The Minister for Financial Services & Regulation, Joe Hockey, today said the new commercial arrangements negotiated between Australia's newsagents and publishers met the Government's election commitment to preserve newspaper home delivery.
"Australians can now be assured of continued delivery of their morning papers, while newsagents can be assured of a more certain environment in which to conduct their business," the Minister said today.
"The new commercial arrangements give newsagents greater freedom and greater flexibility to manage their businesses with confidence.
"It is about the publishers offering contracts to individual newsagents of between three to five years. Those contracts comprise three areas. The first relates to retail sales; the second to distribution to sub agents; and the third to delivery to households.
"If a newsagent wants to specialise in home delivery that newsagent can purchase another newsagent's home delivery service and thereby provide guarantees of delivery.
"However, to ensure home delivery continues in areas where there is only one newsagent, particularly rural and regional Australia, newsagents will be required to continue home delivery or if they sell it off, guarantee home delivery is carried out by a third party."
The new commercial framework follows six months consultation between the country's 4,500 newsagents and 25,000 sub-agents, the country's publishers and facilitated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
"Now, the competitive framework that has evolved should see the innovative newsagents thrive, with benefits to consumers including an even better home delivery system," the Minister said.
The need for a new arrangements in the newsagent industry followed the November 1998 decision of the Australian Competition Tribunal that aspects of the newsagency systems in NSW, the ACT, Victoria and Queensland no longer satisfied the public benefit test as required by the Trade Practices Act.