“The Association owns and licences to the Trustee all the intellectual property in its name, logo, colours, designs and all other indicia, all of which it has copyright over. It may well be that the Association could offer to the Trustee an irreversible permanent licence over the use of all these.”

He added that the prospect of the Association continuing its public policy work for the benefit of remaining member groups (which now include the WA, SA, ACT and Northern Territory motor trade associations, and the Australian Automobile Dealers Association, with the Service Station Association set to be lost to a merger with the NSW MTA) might still be seen by the Trustee as a valuable service to all its members.

In its 2008/09 annual report, MTAA Super listed 19 staff, all of whom are employees of MTAA Ltd. The ‘Association side’ of MTAA Ltd has 12 staff (recently pared from 14 following the membership losses), including a handful who split their time between MTAA Ltd and MTAA Super (Delaney is the most senior of these).

The CEO of the NSW MTA, James McCall, said his members believed MTAA Ltd. needed to become “leaner” if it was to represent value for money, and would prefer it to be purely a “good lobbyist” in Canberra rather than also having an extensive secretariat. He was looking to set a date for a meeting this month of the various state-based motor trader associations with the national body, to “create a model that is more relevant to upcoming generations”.

The principal policy director of Queensland’s MTA, Richard Payne, said it withdrew in protest at the perceived conflict of interest between MTAA Ltd serving both employers, through its lobbying in Canberra on behalf of motor trade small businesses, and their employees through its provision of secretarial duties for MTAA Super.

Michael Delaney was not available for comment yesterday.