Australia Post up for sale

Vanguard November 2013 p. 8
Alice M.

Australia Post, one of the last few remaining national government owned public services, is being prepared for privatisation.

The sell off means the 150 year old national mail service will cease to provide an efficient, inexpensive and easily accessible mail service to ordinary people in cities and rural communities. 

Jobs are already going and more will go as privatisation is rolled out.  Privatisation will result in higher mail costs for letters and parcels, and less accessible and efficient service to the community.  The costs to small businesses will go up whilst big business will reap the profits.

Last time the government, on behalf of big business, tried to privatise Australia Post more than 5 years ago, a groundswell of public and community protest forced it to back down and shelf it, temporarily.

Now foreign and local big business is at it again, demanding to get their hands on Australia Post’s most profitable area of parcel deliveries.

The Business Council of Australia demands the proceeds from the lucrative sale of Australia Post be ploughed into building the infrastructure of road, ports, etc. that benefits big business profit making.

The expansion of popular on-line shopping in past 3 years has resulted in huge growth of Australia Post’s parcels processing and deliveries.  Australia Post has the biggest share of the parcel delivery market in Australia.  It makes a healthy profit, with most of Australia Post’s profits in the past 3 years generated by the growth in parcels.

Its long time popular national brand, reputation for reliability, modern and efficient nation-wide infrastructure makes Australia Post a very lucrative acquisition for big local and overseas transport monopolies, like Toll.

Australia Post is ploughing capital investment of more than $2 billion into modernising and expanding the parcels processing centres, introducing latest overseas parcels processing technology, equipment and trucks. 

Whilst the growing parcels deliveries business is being beefed up from taxpayers’ funds to make it attractive for privatisation, public funds are syphoned off away from providing a reliable mail service to city and rural communities.  Australia Post is cutting back mail services to city and local communities.

Its own so-called Government Enterprise Community Obligation Charter that requires 5 day mail deliveries to city and rural communities is being amended to cut back the frequency and reliability of mail deliveries. 

More jobs in letter processing and delivery centres, retail shops and head office administration are being lined up for the axe.  Speed ups, increasing workloads, workplace injuries, bullying and harassment by the bosses and the threat of loss of jobs hangs over Australia Post workers’ lives.

The restructure of Australia Post presently underway is designed to break up Australia Post services.  Separate the hugely profitable parcels processing and delivery operations in preparation for the first stage of privatisation.  The less profitable community services in retail and letter delivery operations are being cut back and starved of funds, to die off or be sold off for a peppercorn in the future.

The wide use of the internet for communication and payment of accounts means big business doesn’t need efficient and timely letter delivery services or local Post Offices.  But it demands the takeover of Australia Post’s lucrative parcel delivery operations.

In the last financial period Australia Post made a healthy profit of $312million, and paid $244million dividend to the government.  The CEO of Australia Post, an ex-chief of the NAB, Ahmed Fahour, paid himself $4.75 million for his services to big business. 

The CEO of Australia Post and his small group of lackeys are waging a relentless war to crush Australia Post workers’ militant Victorian branch union, the CWU.  The Victorian branch refuses to bow to bosses’ bribery, threats and intimidation, but instead stands up and fights for the workers, as any union worth its name should.

Australia Post workers, their union and community fought back privatisation last time, and will do it again.