A Lorn newsagent says his business will face a fight for survival if the state government allows supermarkets and service stations to sell lottery tickets.
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Rod King took over the Belmore Road newsagency in October after working as a warehouse manager at Joy Global and spending 18 years at O’Neills Tyres in East Maitland.
His wife, son and one other employee operate the newsagency.
Mr King said lottery tickets accounted for about 40 per cent of his store’s customer base and about 60 per cent of financial turnover.
He said he would not have bought the newsagency had he known about the state government’s plan to broaden the range of businesses allowed to sell lottery tickets.
“It would certainly put our survival under severe threat,” Mr King said.
The entry of Woolworths and Coles into the fuel industry in recent years, Mr King said, had a devastating impact on independent service station operators.
He said he feared a similar scenario if the supermarket giants were able to sell lottery tickets.
“The thing that concerns me is whether Coles and Woolworths would be subject to the same regulations and training that we had to go through,” Mr King said.
“Corner stores, bakers and butchers all become unviable when the big boys come to town.”
The current agreement that ensures newsagencies are the only lottery outlets in NSW will expire in April.
NSW Treasurer Andrew Constance said yesterday that the agreement between the government and Tatts Lotto in 2010 only included a five-year moratorium on lottery sales to allow newsagencies time to prepare to enter a competitive market this year.
But Labor candidate for Maitland Jenny Aitchison said her party would make sure newsagencies remained the sole lottery outlets in NSW if elected.
“Local newsagents are the lifeblood of our town centres and shopping villages, but their future is at risk if a fair agreement is not negotiated for the distribution of lottery products,” she said.
“Newsagents provide vital community services and have been the training ground for thousands of young people for many years to get their first job experience – that deserves to be protected.”
