What comment?
The retention allowance has merit. There are inherent imbalances in the AFL competition that favour Victorian based teams. Less travel, a talent base that is mainly located in one state, the majority of the media being based in Victoria (meaning the vast majority of media opportunities are in Victoria - no one seems to care that after signing with Collingwood, Cloke gets a nice healthy contract from Channel 9), the Grand Final always being played on the home ground of several Melbourne teams, etc.
All these things make list management and player retention more difficult for the expansion clubs. And with free agency coming in, that's only going to increase. So that's the problem, this idea that doing nothing = equality is silly, because the entire structure of the competition has inherent disadvantages.
The smaller Melbourne clubs feel it too - they have to try and increase their exposure and their fanbase (which means more money, which means more money in the football department), but they never get any high drawing fixtures.