NANA moves to secure rent lease relief for all Newsagents

NANA is working closely with our leasing specialist and government officials, through COSBOA, and with other small business organisations across Australia to protect Newsagents and other small businesses from existing onerous lease conditions which may become crucial to the survival of Newsagencies, now and in the future.

NANA is calling on all state and territory governments (who control legislation and regulations) to introduce changes to protect Newsagents from aggressive landlords who fail to consider the realities of current and future trading and financial conditions.

NANA is demanding the following:

EMERGENCY BILL PROPOSAL

Small Retailer (Business Continuity Under a Lease) Bill 2020 in response to loss of sales from human biosecurity emergency to apply to: –

Amend Act:
“Despite any other provision in this Act, until such time as the relevant Minister directs, a lessor must not: –
a) terminate an occupancy agreement or lease;
b) lock out a lessee;
c) draw down bank guarantee or any rental bonds;
d) enforce any personal guarantees;
e) hold the lessee in default the lessee or in breach of an occupancy agreement for non or partial payment of rent or any other charges due to the lessor,

Unless:-
A. the lessor has served a notice with sufficient detail upon the lessee that a rental dispute exists and it intends to act upon and of the matters referred to in (a)-(e) above giving no less than 6 months to remedy;
and
B. the lessor and the lessee:
a) have acted reasonably in all the circumstances;
b) have met and acted in good faith to discuss the dispute;
c) cannot reach an agreement or resolution of the dispute;
d) have mediated the dispute under the relevant Act or regulation and that mediation has failed.”

In our discussions with governments who are now developing plans for what NANA has been told will be a lock-down, NANA has insisted that Newsagencies be exempt from any forced closures, regardless of their location – shopping centre, high street, strip shops, stand alone. NANA does not expect such an exemption would force Newsagents to trade when they do not want to. NANA sees Newsagents as essential services and that they must be allowed to continue to trade where they can and where they wish to.

NANA is aware of and has seen quite a bit of material circulating by email originating from a number of sources which make wild claims about how the authors are representing Newsagents.

NANA has and will continue to maintain an approach based on fact and reliable information. NANA will not pretend to be expert on everything. Other than providing links to government resources, NANA will not provide general health advice. There are people better qualified than anyone who works for an industry association who can give that advice via government sources.

NANA will not regurgitate slabs of hysterical information sourced from overseas web sites. We have seen information coming out of Victoria which contains slabs of text sourced from USA based internet sites. Whilst claims have been made the material is original, you only need to check the spelling to see it uses American English and spelling.

NANA advises Newsagents to tun up the bulls*%t filter to high and act on facts rather than erroneous claims of action. NANA recommends Newsagents rely on official government sources and this they trust.