The Alliance of Australian Retailers has been receiving a lot of bad press mainly as many see it as a front organisation for the multi-national tobacco companies campaigning against the federal government's proposed plain packaging for retailing cigarettes.
The alliance on its website claims to be an organisation fed up with excessive regulation. It then quotes as an example the government's proposal to mandate plain packaging for cigarettes. Although I agree with them about excessive regulations, I do not feel that plain packaging for cigarettes, is a good way to present this case to the public. Nor do I see from the criticisms in the press that many others do either.
I suspect it was because of this bad press that the Australian Association of Convenience Stores (AACS) withdrew from the alliance with its members claiming that they had been misled.
I am sure that nothing good will come to the ANF if it remains in the alliance.
