The Australian Gifts & Homewares Association (AGHA) has vowed to take an active role in advocacy on issues that affect its members.

AGHA have announced a major campaign on the Carbon Tax issues as Chief Executive David Leek said “the Australian Government had not given adequate consideration to how the carbon tax would effect a retail and wholesale sector already struggling in tough conditions”

The AGHA has set up a Carbon Tax section on their advocacy website and invited members to register their concerns and to contact their local Federal MP to express their concern.

Leek suggests that the Carbon Reduction should be a matter of corporate and personal responsibility rather than a public tax and says that the government has taken the usual sledhammer approach with heavy taxation.

AGHA Chief Executive David Leek says that the carbon tax is yet another ALP Policy  that strikes at the heart of small to medium businesses and families in Australia.

Australian Government incompetence is again the reason why Australian importers are getting only pain from APEC at a time when they most need help.

An article in the Australian Wholesalers Directory highlights the stupidity behind 10,000 Australian importer being denied APEC Business Travel Cards without notice by the bumbling  Foreign Affairs and Trade department of the  failing Australian Government

Prime ministers from Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation countries announced the APEC Business Travel Card with a huge fanfare a few years ago after the Australian sumit, showing what great fellows they were and how they were helping business get on with trade between APEC countries.

They then had the hide to charge $200 each for processing applications and really took their time about doing it.

Even so the APEC Business Travel Card was a huge benefit to business, as previousely if you wanted to go to places like China you had to travel to the chinese embassy in Sydney and line up like sheep to lodge a visa application including multiple forms and photos and documents for every single trip and then travel back like a dirty little beggar to get the visa. Not to mention a big fee each time.

Maybe its time to start importing from other countries apart from APEC. Other countries might value an importers visit to their trade fairs instead of treating you like a sheep.

If you recently applied for renewal of the the APEC Business Travel Card after 3 years you will be getting a nasty little shock unless you are the managing director of BHP.

It seems APEC had too many stinky little Australian businessmen who wanted to import from China and other Asian Countries and they might have some terrorists amoung us, so they changed the rules.

It seems now around 10,000 Australian business people alone have been unknowingly stripped of their APEC Business Travel Cards, because of Changes implements by that fool Chris Bowen Minister for imigration

Under changes recently introduced, card holders need to be in the top tiers of management at their company, and need to be able to show they are trading or investing Multi Millions with APEC nations.

The decision was made suddenly, with no consultation and no communication of the decision from the department to business groups or card holders.

So if you have applied for renewal and didn’t know about this huge denigration of the majority of Australian importers by APEC , then you will soon be getting a request for documentation to prove you can substantiate $millions pa in trade.

Bad luck about the $200 per applicant you recently sent APEC to apply for renewal. They will keep that, that’s why they didn’t send you a notice about your impossible renewal.

The most recent Commonwealth Bank business sales indicators have shown their strongest growth in nearly two years. This indicates that consumers are finally starting to spend in a more relaxed way.

Shopping giant David Jones is planning to invest more money in their stores to attract customers before the Christmas period.

DJ’s has announced it would spend as much as $80 million to refurbish stores this year.