Motor trades chief quits amid industry ruckus

MOTOR Trades Association of Australia (MTAA) chief executive officer Michael Delaney has quit Australia’s retail motor industry peak body in the wake of the defection of four state member bodies to set up a rival organisation.

Mr Delaney will, however, retain his management role at the associated MTAA Super Fund in a move that nevertheless removes a major sticking point with the state organisations: his dual role across both organisations.

Speaking to GoAuto today, MTAA spokesperson Verity Jausnik confirmed Mr Delaney’s departure and the elevation of deputy CEO Sue Scanlan to acting CEO pending a board decision on a permanent management structure.

Mr Delaney’s move was announced in a letter to member organisations on Thursday – a week after four former member organisations announced a new national body, the Australian Automotive Industry Association (AAIA), to handle the retail motor industry’s affairs.

The MTAA’s membership was decimated when, over a period of five years, the three biggest state organisations – MTA News South Wales, MTA Queensland and the Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce (VACC) – quit the organisation, along with the Tasmanian Automobile Chamber of Commerce (TACC), taking up to 80 per cent of Australia’s retail motor industry with them.



Left: Chief executives of motor industry associations from Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland and NSW announce AAIA in Melbourne.

The remaining state and territory organisations, from Western Australia, South Australia, Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory, declined an invitation to join the defection to the AAIA, expressing a sentiment that all states should work together to fix problems at the existing national organisation rather than form a new one.

It remains to be seen if Mr Delaney’s departure from the industry federation side of the MTAA changes the attitude of the various state organisations on both sides of the divide.

Executives are reluctant to talk publicly about the sensitive issue until they have had time to speak with interstate counterparts.

However, one of the key issues that the states bodies had striven to change for several years was Mr Delaney’s retention of management positions in both the MTAA Limited – the industry federation – and administration of MTAA Super.

MTAA Super is one of Australia’s largest industry funds with 290,000 members and more than $5.5 billion in funds under management.

The rebel organisations were at pains to point out that they had no beef with the way the super fund was being run, but they did say they were taking issue with the effectiveness of the MTAA industry body in addressing key regulatory issues and in dealing with a threat to individual motor traders from increasingly powerful big businesses.

They expressed frustration that the MTAA had “taken on a life of its own” and had been too difficult to reform from within.