Franchisee activists vow to fight on after WA bill falls over; Abetz says state-based legislation in NSW and Qld to follow

Franchisee activists have raised the spectre of further state-based franchising legislation, after a private member’s franchise bill fell over in Western Australia this week by just one vote.

The vote was lost after the speaker, Nationals MP Grant Woodhams, used his casting vote to defeat it. But the bill’s author, Liberal MP Peter Abetz, says MPs from Queensland and New South Wales have told him they plan on bringing similar legislation to their own states.

The long-discussed Western Australian Franchising Bill sought to impose financial penalties for breaches of the Franchising Code of Conduct and provide a statutory duty of good faith.