Special Offer from AFA Member Porta

                                                                                                      For a limited time Porta’s OMG’s are available direct from Porta at 50% discount off list price. Call Porta on 1300 650 787 to place an order. Porta is the...

2016 ACE Winner Tamara Glick

Tamara Glick was one of our 2016 ACE Student Design Winners. Recently she collaborated with Aine Dowling to create another one of her clever designs for Hollywood Primary School, their own Bench. The bench’s varying heights and colours are a nod to the...

Managing Your Credit

  Acme Furniture Assemblers (Acme) had a lucrative contract with a manufacturer of premium flat-packed furniture, Larceny Pty Ltd (Larceny). Acme was contracted to install shop displays for Larceny in the showrooms of national furniture retailers, and complete...

AFA Member exhibited to rave reviews in Milan

AFA Member Fabio Biavaschi exhibited and launched his MEK COLLECTION, which includes a chair, stool/side table and the new bookcase during Milan Design Week 2016 at iSaloni Fiera Milano Rho PAD 18 – stand C02-C06 last April and the AFA looks forward to seeing...

Inland surf beach to be pitted in western Sydney car park

  First, it was Melbourne now Sydney with plans for an an old car park at Sydney Olympic Park to be transformed into an artificial surf beach by surf park developer Wave Park Group and Perth-based architecture practice MJA Studio. Wave Park Group has announced it...

Red Dot Awards

This year’s Red Dot Awards for Product Design received more than 5,200 entries the highest number of submissions ever in the 61-year-old design competition—across 31 categories spanning lighting products to fashion accessories to finish materials. Among...

2016 Victorian Architecture Awards Shortlist Revealed

  The Australian Institute of Architects Victorian Chapter has announced the shortlist for the 2016 Victorian Architecture Awards. From 198 entries, 14 juries carried out an extensive schedule of site visits and have shortlisted 70 individual projects across 15...

How to spot a dodgy business!

  TV show Kochie’s Business Builders is set to produce a series of videos to help you spot and protect yourself from dodgy phoenix operators. What is a phoenix company? A phoenix company is one that closes up by going into liquidation. It then starts trading...

Hemp at the heart of Western Australia’s first eco-village

The project manager of Western Australia’s first eco-village, partly built with hemp, believes the finished product will add weight to the growing push for it to be widely used in the construction industry. Which could see it roll out into mainstream furniture...

Exporters to USA receive major windfall

  With a resurgent economy and a weaker Aussie dollar, the United States is well and truly back on the radar of Australian exporters as the world’s largest economy and by far the largest consumer market. And exporters to the market received a major shot in the...

Business Confidence jumps again in April

  Good news for Members, Roy Morgan Research’s Business Confidence rose again in April (up 6.4% to 123.1) and has now risen 12.5 pts over the last three months since a 2016 low of 110.6 in January. The rise in Business Confidence comes after more improvement on...

2016-17 Budget Summary

  TARGET PRACTICE The 2016-17 Federal Budget is a budget of targets – broad targets to boost business and innovation and the narrow revenue targets of the wealthy and multi-nationals. It’s a big, long-term crafted budget designed to give enough pre-election glow...

Casual employees and dismissal

  All AFA Members who employ staff on a casual basis should know that their entitlements including their dismissal rights, change over time. Casual employment is becoming increasingly popular in Australian business with a whopping one in five employees classified...

Free ‘Tax for Small Business Workshop’ for WA Members

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Xenophon on VET Reform and Jobs

  Senator Nick Xenophon will open the 2016 Furnishing Futures Conference where the hot topic will be the impact of VET Reform to Industry. The annual event features a number of high profile industry experts, both local and international, who will present across a...

Urgent Injunctions

  Commercial operators recognise that legal advisors are one of the tools in the box that assist in problem prevention or problem solving. When an operator is backed into a corner, either by the intentional or unintentional acts of an employee, competitor,...

Penalty rates talk out of this world for Labor

  Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has suggested that the Fair Work Commission is unlikely to recommend a reduction in weekend penalty rates. The FWC were tipped to make a decision last Sunday on penalty rates in the retail and hospitality sectors soon after the...