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Just over a year ago, deregulation hit the newsagent industry, forcing many to change the way they operated. Maria Cobden takes at look at what the changes have done to the industry.

The saying 'the more things change, the more they stay the same' could well be applied to the newsagency industry one year on from deregulation. Not much has changed.

Deregulation forced newsagents to accept individual contracts from the people who publish the magazines and newspapers from which they derive their livelihood.

Balancing that, the termination clause has been extending from 30 days to a more realistic term, ensuring newsagents have financial stability in terms of cashflow and business worth.

According the Australian Newsagent Federation CEO Paul Waite, "as a whole deregulation has gone very well" although he says some newsagents were, in the beginning, very nervous about the change in operations.

"I guess a lot of that stems back from they had been newsagents for a long time and are used to one system then all of a sudden the system changed."

He believes a lot of the fear that was there prior to deregulation regarding the change in contracts was unfounded.

"Obviously the contracts were written in favour of publishers but the contracts have actually improved the industry itself in terms of value."

He says this because previously the contracts had a 30 day termination notice, "Whereas now there is a contract for a given period of time, for years, which gives them almost like a mortgage document that they can [take] along to the financial markets, particularly, and say my business is worth this and we have this contract in place."

That's not to say it is all smooth sailing; Waite says they are still working through some issues with publishers. One being that some newspaper publishers believe a few newsagents are in breach of the contract by not having a computer system in place. "The irony of that is we are looking at an electronic exchange platform where our publishers can communicate with our newsagents. We already have it in place for the magazines, it is called xchangeit and that has been put in place, we are a partner, a shareholder, in the company that is doing that. But the two major newspapers decided not to participate in that and are doing their own. They said it [xchangeit] was more designed for magazines, and they could be correct."