AUS POST CEO CAUGHT LYING
Yesterday in parliament I asked Australia Post CEO Paul Graham straight up why he is shutting down the Coleambally Licensed Post Office and whether he had consulted with the local council and members of the community.
He told me Australia Post had responded to Murrumbidgee Council concerns about the closure.
Today the Mayor and CEO John told me that no such correspondence had ever been received. So Paul Graham lied about a decision that will devastate a country town, and that raises the obvious question, what else is he lying about?
This is the man pulling in $3.3 million a year of our taxpayer dollars including a $1.58 million bonus.
To put that pay packet in perspective, the Prime Minister earns around $622,000, the federal Communications Minister who oversees Australia Post earns around $402,000, and a NSW state cabinet minister earns around $333,000.
Add those three together add to roughly $1.36 million, which is less than half of what Graham salary in a single year, and his bonus alone is bigger than the Prime Minister's entire annual salary.
Running a regional post office costs a tiny fraction of that, yet Graham has decided Coleambally is the line item that has to go.
In February, Australia Post downgraded Coleambally's LPO to a Community Postal Agency and shoved it into the local pharmacy, where mail is now sorted on a trestle table under a carport and the town has been of stripped of PO boxes, its banking, its bill payments and its parcel tracking all in one hit.
Ninety per cent (90%) of Coleambally residents want their LPO back, 95 per cent say they were never consulted before Australia Post took it away, and when one of their own workers had the guts to speak out about what was really going on, Australia Post sacked her.
Seventy three post offices were closed across Australia last year and Coleambally is not going to be the next one Australia Post quietly takes off the map.
This is bigger than Coleambally. It is about a $3.3 million CEO who lies,sacks the workers who tell the truth, and decides from a Sydney office which country communities get to keep a basic public service.
Licensed Post offices should be regarded as an essential service.
The only way we get change is to apply continuous pressure, and that pressure only works when our communities are too big to ignore.
Share this post with your friends, your family, your group chat, send it to a journalist, send it to a politician in Canberra, and drop a comment so this thing carry further.
The bigger this gets, the harder it becomes for Graham to look the other way.
We are not going to give up, we are not going to stand down, and we are going to keep yelling louder and fighting harder until Coleambally gets back the post office this town deserves and every regional community in this country gets the equity we are owed.
