Having run a few businesses in my time I thought I knew my way around a set of accounts. Not so it seems.

Here are the accounts for Australia Post;
http://auspost.com.au/annualreport2013/financial-report.html

“This year Australia Post’s profit after tax was $311.9 million; this is 20.8 per cent higher than our 2010 underlying profit after tax (excluding restructuring costs).”

“Underpinning the improved result was $5.9 billion in revenue.”

“We delivered a strong rate of return for our shareholder, the Federal Government, paying a cash dividend of $243.7 million (up 25.7 per cent this year). Our return on equity was 18.5 per cent.”

This is apparently why 900 Australia Post workers had to be sacked.

“Mr Fahour says the job cuts are needed as Australia Post heads towards billion-dollar annual losses due to a 30 per cent decline in letter volumes over the past five years, which is only expected to accelerate. "Losses in letters are now, for the first time, overwhelming the profits we make in parcels," he said.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-10/australia-post-confirms-900-jobs-to-go-in-restructure/5511414

Who else thinks we are getting sold a pup? I wouldn't care if Australia Post broke even each year. Their job is to provide a postal service to Australians with the principle that we can send a letter anywhere in this big wide land from one Australian to another for the same rate, a universal service. I know the city subsidises the country to some degree but I think most city folk do not begrudge that fact. I also know that a decline in letter volumes and a rise in parcel volumes has meant one area is subsidising the other but so what.

In splitting the parcel and letter divisions I guarantee the first will be privatised and the second will remain in public hands at a far more diminished service.

It's a public utility whose fate is being dictated by economic rationalists who have got their little MBA matrix out and think they know what needs to be done to protect and enhance profits for the shareholder, but they seem to be forgetting just who that is.

steels your right//they are setting up a great theft
aussie post has/the bes stamp collection/in the world
woth over 15 billion/just that meaty little asset/that prints them paper pictures.

then you have a daily distribution network/that will shortly be automateD/THAT NETWORK/PLUS BASED = 6=8 BILION..THEN THE GOODWILLL

anyhow/its looting and plunder][like when we sold our gold resefves/in the bottum of the market

like when we sold the commonwealth bank/for 9 bilion
that today makes 9 billion proffit eaxch year

like when obid tok over water/like qld did/like we gold plating the powerlnesbefore sellingvthem/how we sold telstra/after building the system/the public servant slush fund stole it

anyhow i say take back all privatised infastructure
or if you going to sell it/issue shares out to the users/and allow us to sell our share for our price

see when commies went bust/everyone got shares
when capitalist merchantiism/goes bust they bailo=in our cash/into their bonus/as we sell off income production/we increase taxes/when taxes was only installed to pay off war bedt/after BANBKING SCUM STOLE THE NATIONAL BANKS

DRAW THE LINE
SEIZE BACK LOOTED ASSETS
then take back the proceeeds of crime.like the 9 bilion comm bank gets every year/times the 30 years ago it was sld for a song to a mate from the choir.

"Australia Post employs more than 32,000 employees and around 10,000 licensees, franchisees and mail contractors"

So cutting back 900 positions this year is less than 3% of the employees, which with a turn over of personnel of roughly 10% is a drop in the ocean and mostly can be accommodated by re assignment. Considering that letter delivery is dropping by about 6% p.a. this would seem to be a rational move.

If nearly all correspondence today is via electronic means, the reliance on daily deliveries is difficult to justify. There are alternatives that have successfully used elsewhere. Reduce mail deliveries to 3 times a week, or even twice a week, or, provide free of charge individual mail boxes in clusters near to the houses.

The alternative is to ramp up the cost of postage which is already one of the highest in the world.

Adding insult to injury is the obscene payment to the head of Australia Post.

“Mr Fahour - a former CEO of NAB and Citigroup - was paid $4.8 million last year as chief executive officer and managing director of Australia Post, which is 100 per cent Government-owned. In contrast, the head of the US Postal Service was paid $550,000 in 2013, despite running a company with 19 times more staff and 11 times the revenue.
The head of France's postal service, La Poste, was paid $1.06 million for running a service with 268,000 employees. The highest paid public servant in Australia is the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Ian Watt, who earns more than $800,000 per year.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-11/critics-question-australia-post-ceos-multi-million-dollar-salary/5514682

Dear Shadow Minister,

You wrote;

“The alternative is to ramp up the cost of postage which is already one of the highest in the world.”

You must forgive me for checking but the very first one I investigated was the cost of sending a letter within the UK. The rate for a second class personal letter is 53p (95 cents AUD) and for a first class letter it is 62p ($1.12 AUD).

It should be noted that the Royal Mail has been privatised. Now even in the UK country folk may be left out.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/royal-mail/10915081/Daily-deliveries-to-rural-areas-at-risk-Royal-Mail-warns.html

Do you personally want to see Australia Post privatised and what good would you see that doing the country?

Dear SteeleRedux,

Thank You for this discussion.

I've come across an interesting article that gives
(in my opinion) quite a good take on the possibilities
open for the future of Australia Post.
It's worth a read.

"Approx. 60 percent of Australia Posts 4,429 retail
outlets operate in regional, rural, and remote Australia.
These outlets are often the hub of business activity in
small towns. Australia Post is also the only provider
of parcel services in many areas, even though nationally
this is a highly competitive market. As an agent for more
than 750 businesses and government entities Australia Post's
retail outlets provide access to services in areas where
they are not likely to be replaced by private providers."

"Any changes to existing CSOs will have implications for the
broader network of outlets and services that Australia Post
supports throughout rural and remote Australia.
The worldwide trend in demand for letter services suggests
that the decline in the need for this service is terminal.
However, people will still need to send parcels to each
other, get passports, and do other things over the counter.
Some level of obligation on Australia Post to maintain services
in areas the market will not go will be required to
guarantee basic service and cost equity in communications for
Australians."

"But Australia Post could also help to reduce and eliminate
the net cost of services to smaller communities, and at the
same time improve and expand services outside its
traditional letter business."

http://theconversation/the-future-of-australia-post-will-be-off-the-beaten-track-27448

‘morning Steelie,

The issue of TNT and privatized postal services doesn’t hold water.

TNT was acquired in 1994 by the privatized Dutch postal services “Royal PTT Netherlands NV”.

So the Dutch postal service are experts in global and pan-European mail and TNT are logistics specialists in 90 countries.

What is wrong with a postal services company running postal services?

Steel, while last years figures may be swell, businesses don't give two hoots about them as they are old news.

What businesses do is look to the future and plan for such to the best of their ability. If this means reducing costs, so be it.

Now if you were to look at say QGC as an example, their employment pattern over the past few years has been jobs growth and more jobs growth, until recently that is.

My point is that once they have finished the bulk of their infrastructure, which they have now, you will see massive job cuts, which has and is still happening and, in the next year or so you will see huge profits, with only a small increase in jobs, simply because they will be finally selling gas, something they have not been doing yet.

This is the fundamental difference between governments and business, as governments wait for data to be released, then act, where as business acts then waits for data/results.

Besides, like it or not, the creating of jobs is not the priority of most businesses.

I worked for Australia Post years ago, When it became clear letter numbers where dropping, Management said Junk mail was the way to go (idiots), Union at the time wanted to invest in delivery services like DHL. My thoughts Find out who ran Australia Post 10 years Ago and sue crap out of them for being morons

Hello there STEELEREDUX...

It's a rare event indeed that I ever thought I'd agree with you on anything of note. However, I feel you're quite right when you say, we poor saps have all been sold a pup.

You're are correct when you opined that surely our postal system is a 'service' it's not there to make money, as an entrepreneurial business if you like. Australia is such a large country therefore a competent, reliable and affordable postal service is vitally important to us all.

It is amusing if the headling-hunting NSW 'Watermelon' Greens have suddenly discovered country people. Last years years ago they were beefing about a couple of Sydney inner city post offices closing.

What needs to be understood is that where there customers have already departed to render the services uneconomic, it would be very foolish to continue to pay for expensive real estate and idle staff. Maybe a poll on OLO to ascertain just who uses the snail mail and how often? Business has been conducted electronically for donkeys years and Australia Post's managers have held on tooth and claw to keep staff employed, and against the beaut, leading edge entitlements of public servants too.

Ahem, SteeleRedux:

- what were those businesses you say you ran (owned?) and what happened to cause you to move on?

- what practical initiatives would you, and the NSW 'Watermelon' Greens be recommending to make those customers go back to snail mail?

Maybe the NSW 'Watermelon' Greens have the North Korean model in mind? Although they don't get to post many letters do they?

correction, my first para above should have read,

"It is amusing if the headling-hunting NSW 'Watermelon' Greens have suddenly discovered country people. Last heard years ago they were beefing about a couple of Sydney inner city post offices closing."

o sung wu,

It isn't that Australia Post managers are letting the public down. They have tried their very best and often against unions and human headlines in the NSW Greens. The public has moved on to prefer electronic communication, which by virtue of technology, is infinitely cheaper and more convenient. Australia Post (and Telecom) once enjoyed a virtual monopoly on channels of communication.

OLO posters are not licking envelopes and stamps to post to an editor somewhere, are they?

SR,

I am not necessary talking about OECD countries. I can get a Aus to EU plug adaptor from China incl delivery for $1. Delivery from the US is not much more expensive than internally.

That there is already so much competition in the parcel delivery business shows that there is no reason why the government needs to compete against private business, and that Royal mail is struggling to compete against private letter deliveries in the city shows again that the only tiny segment of the market that requires any government intervention is the deliveries to remote rural areas. This can also be privately run with some subsidies from the government.

'afternoon to you ONTHEBEACH...

I can't argue with your logic there ? There's no doubt, Email is far more convenient (though, it does lack the 'personal' touch) than the conventional 'snail mail' we of generations past, are far more appraised of, I'd imagine ?

While Australia Post may have a case, there're fewer letters been posted these days, surely there's a significant 'uptake' with parcel post with the establishment of Ebay and other commercial retailers accessible on our faithful home computer ?

I really don't know, I've always maintained a soft spot for our postal system, with a genuine warmth for our local 'postie' together with the awe in which we held our local Post Master ? The man who virtually controlled and brought to us all the good news, as well as the bad news, in my younger days.

o sung wu,

I share your nostalgia for days gone bye. Although I would not want a return to the hardships and deprivations the substantial majority of Aussies endured in the decades following post-WW2 (or from WW1 through the Depression and then WW2). They were hard times and testament to that is our fond memories of the simple, practical mundane things of life, such as the milkman. I wonder if any are really aware of the endurance of the posties who pedaled those lumbering postie bicycles over hills?

However it was the lack of public custom that killed the snail mail, and the postal couriers too, because many order online and take the cheapest available service, which may not be the one that always caters for all areas while balancing costs across all customers.

You are not one of them, but I find it hypocritical of people like the Greens 'Watermelons' and leftist union heavies who frustrate senior managers with their political games and protect their own selfish entitlement so ferociously, have the gall to turn around and pretend that they are worried about postal services in country areas. Cobblers!

o sung wu, do you remember the exasperation of missing the post, or waiting wondering what might be happening with a loved one travelling? We have gained, not lost.

Foxy you've got that all wrong my sweet. Most "post offices" in smaller country towns, & even city suburbs are private businesses operated by people with another business operating from the same premises. How much they are paid for their post office work depends on their turnover. They must have someone approved by the post service, after sitting a test, to run the post office side of the business.

My parents last business was a post office hardware & gift shop in Kirrawee, a Sydney suburb near Sutherland. Every Monday night they would spend hours filling out the weekly Post office report. It was about a third oh their net income.

Most mail in country areas, including quite large towns with a few thousand residents, have their mail delivered by contractors, who tender for an annual or 3 year contract. I have not had my mail delivered by a public servant in decades.

For many years my address was RMB xxx, MS 112 Howard Queensland. [roadside mail box xxx, mail service 112, Howard Queensland] In fact I lived on 3 different properties 32 miles apart in Wide Bay, all on the same mail service, with the same contractor delivering my mail. I never had to worry about the Post Office stuffing up my redirection notice.

My present bloke runs a ute, with a posty type bike on the back. He uses the bike mostly, operating from different spots where he parks the ute. He only uses that when he has to deliver bulky parcels. The previous lady used a car, & most of us have our mail box out from the front fence, where the posty can get to it without getting out of their car.

Some of these contractors in more remote areas, would supplement their post office income by delivering bread, groceries & hardware for a small fee.

Steely the last thing we can afford is keeping overpaid public servants doing pretend work. We need to switch to contract mail delivery as it has always been through most of the country. By all means give existing letter delivery people first chance to contract for the work, at a competitive price.

They would most likely have to work a bit harder, & cover more area to earn the same income but why shouldn't they? Most of us have to work a bit harder than public servants, usually for a lot less money, & it is time that changed. If country mail contractors have to work hard, & have a sideline to make ends meet, why shouldn't city letter delivery people.

Putting public servants on piece work rates would be about the best thing we could do to bring the budget back into the black, but I suppose they would all have heart attacks & cost us even more.

At least they couldn't go on stress leave, because someone frowned at them. Stress leave is a luxury only available to public servants it appears, & certainly not available to contractors.

While it is true there has been a "collapse" in the general letter business for AP, there has been a "surge" in the parcel business. The now 100% ownership of the Startrack business sees AP well positioned to increase its market share of the ongoing parcel business. With a large number of shop fronts there is also plenty of opportunities to increase the retail financial services business. I don't think there is much of a danger of AP becoming a financial burden on the Australian taxpayer.
As for talk of "keeping overpaid public servants doing pretend work" that's simply ignorant of the facts. The vast majority of Australia Post employees are as hard working as any of their counterparts in the private sector.

Just one question.

If AP is a viable entity operating amongst other similar companies, why on earth does it need to be publicly owned?

If it is sold off, the government gets money to spend on other infrastructure and pay off labor's debt, and still gets 30% of the profits.

Lest some of the usual suspects # misconstrue that the changes in Australia Post are some kind of Abbott led conspiracy. Let me point out that AP has been shedding staff and degrading assets for a looooooooooooog time. And I could be mistaken (there’s a first time for everything), but my recollection is that the major part of such “restructuring” occurred under previous labour administrations.

During earlier changes they :
-Leased out many of their iconic buildings
-Licensed off most of the smaller POs, and
-Centralised many of their other state divisions in Vic HQ , induced large numbers of other-state staff to leave. Then upped the selection criteria and filled most of the relocated position’s with temps from the subcontinent [which no doubt earned them a lot of kudos with the diversity/multicultural crowd!]

APs traditional mainstay, the letters service is dying. If AP is to survive it needs to adopt and adapt new services. But all too often “modernisation” and “change” when used by AP have been cover words for selling off the silver --making the excecutives and board look good so as to facilitate bigger bonus’s.

The sooner the organisation is privatised the better. It is peppered with petty fiefdoms and nepotism. It needs a good clean-out from C-suite to no-suit level.

# this term used under license with Paul1405

Dear SM I think every time you and your buddies labour/lib sell off assets it ends up costing us in the future. To name a few banks/electricity. So AP could be the best Parcel/online buy delivery service in Australia, But once again WE get screwed over by Sitting government. Next will be the line how much we will save. Add in the Human cost here how many more unemployed do you wish to make, More on the already long dole que

ANY MONEY MADE FROM SELLING AUSSIE POST
is more than offset by the archived stamps it holds historic intrests over

thee unsold stamps/master plaes designs etc etc[in stamp banknote and coin/are worth collectivly great fortunes/monopoly possesionis beyond price

but hey/if ya going tose liquidate the histry by public auction/and be surprised

anyhow the shadow spin meister/too clever by half shadw
your skill is wased/onn this forum//wghhere else ya post?

great example/kiddies

<<If it is sold off,the government>>

you mean the liberal govt[its funny when its yours/its the govt/compared to the next use/for those then/in\govtits the cuntries=debt/not alp/lib/green
we all pay[ok in the usual case the poor pay/and the rich pick/who gets their largess\but then claim a tax deduction/so the poor pay/as all ways

not libs pay
not govt pays
we sukkers paying giovt extortion/taxas 'govt'loots every bit of capital return posiotive asset

just the fed//or just the common wealth bank
or veven just telstra/we wouldnt need sell of aussie post

<<>gets money to spend on other infrastructure>
that capitlaists/[and pension funds/wont risk their riches/on/so the wage slave mug/gets raped again

ten percent of his wages cause all that sin
[see this cash/needs assetswith high future return/and the cash cow aussie post has assets to burn/billions/trillions

stolen/by spn/yet again

then we sold it for your own good/cleared the books
<<. and pay off labor's debt,??featherd many a nest/and stole the best

<<> and still gets 30% of the profits.>>

your a clever man/why sell your soul so cheap
such a great soul/please stop staining it[or at least not be a living hunman/doing it/you sound like a machine

a clay man/robot/you feed tape into ans spin rushes out

at least turn out to be sncere/not a sell-out
sad you could be so great
but hide in the shadows

so be it

Shadow, trotting out that old sell off the "juicy plum" line, with; If AP is a viable entity operating amongst other similar companies, why on earth does it need to be publicly owned?
I'll give you a number of reasons. Firstly, I don't agree it is operating amongst similar companies, which other company in Australia provides a daily personal letter delivery service. I can't think of one, and letter delivery is still a major part of AP's operation. If privatised then the present community obligations that are part of AP would simply be replaced with responsibility to the new shareholders and many Australians, particularly those in regional Australia, would be disadvantaged. Privatization would lead to a national monopoly of postal service without competition and that would see price rises and diminished services for consumers.
I also point to our on going discussion about Australia's largest bank, the CBA which was privatised some years ago, and the problems we are having with it, and its lack of accountability.

Thank you all for your replies.

Firstly from Australia post's own figures there were over 200 pieces of mail delivered for every man, woman and child in this country last year. So much for post being on its last legs. I certainly accept it is diminishing and there have been natural adaptions encompassing the growth in parcel deliveries and the associated revenues.

And I also know how much corporatisation and contracting out that has occurred within the organisation, often leading to heavily underpaid country contractors.

Australia Post might be branded as a form of collectivism, designed to serve bulwark against the deprivations of purely laissez faire capitalism system where the user pays entirely commensurate with the cost of delivering the individual service to them. But to me having city folk pay a small amount extra so that a document from someone in Broome to a person in Davenport doesn't cost $30 speaks to me of a desire for fairness and equity that has been what this nation is about.

For many years private corporations have been prevented from getting their hands on the inner city mail services. They see the profits that might be made because of the margins that are there to allow for a universal system would permit them to undercut Australia Post.

The fact that Australia Post now has growing part of its revenue in parcel services should mean that it has the means to continue with a strong universal system without a direct burden on the tax payer.

Look at the language used in this quote;

“While our parcel and retail businesses performed well this year, this was offset by the structural challenges facing our reserved mail business, which returned a trading loss of $147.4 million (up $33.0 million on last year). This loss was driven by the accelerated decline in addressed letter volumes, which were down 6.4 per cent this year. Unfortunately the fixed-cost nature of our mail network meant that the loss could not be offset by cost savings.”

Cont...

Cont...

No, Australia Post is a government organisation charged with providing a service to all Australians and if one part of it is subsidising another so be it. There are many government services that are a direct drain on the budget but AP delivered over $400 million to the government coffers last year.

This will be the road ahead unless it can be stopped. The split of AP into a profitable parcel delivery entity and a loss making mail delivery entity will be cemented. The government of the day whether it be Liberal or Labour with sell off the former and over time use the losses in the latter to push for privatisation of the latter. In order to keep some notions of universal service it will mandate and pay for subsidised country deliveries but as they will now be a direct cost to the budget bottom line the appetite from the ordinary tax payer will diminish and it will slowly go by the wayside.

I know there are economic rationalists on this forum but every now and again even they need to park the ideology and think about the nation as a whole, to think about the community benefits to small country towns of their local post office, to think of this issue in the light of Australian egalitarianism. This is indeed one of those occasions.

Headline hunting Greens and union officials who might be out of a job,

Versus,

the taxpayer who really doesn't have those 'lazy' dollars to prop up public servants' beaut pay and conditions of service.

Maybe the public would prefer to spend their money where they want to get services rather than supporting public service departments with their huge management overheads.

Why should the public be forced to pay for services they don't want?

AP made a significant operating profit of $400m, even after a loss in the mail division of $147m, meaning that the non mail segment would have delivered an operating profit of about $550m.

The one universal truth is that privately owned businesses almost always deliver services at a lower cost. If the non mail division was sold to private enterprise, it would improve the efficiency and probably increase the profits closer to $800m. Giving the government $bns to pay back Labor's debt or to spend on infrastructure, and tax revenue of up to $300m p.a. which is not much less than they were already getting.

This leaves the ailing mail department. Obviously most of the snail mail is not urgently time dependent. Receiving bills 3 days a week in urban areas or once a week for remote areas is not going to make a vast difference. Having living in a regional area for some years, I can't recall needing daily delivery. The daily delivery is an anachronism harking back to the days when there was no electronic mail. For urgent deliveries, there is always a priority mail option. It only takes common sense to make this a viable operation once again.

This is worth repeating for those who want to inanely bang on about public servants that Australia Post is by law run like a corporation.

“The APC Act requires Australia Post to perform its functions in a commercial manner. Australia Post is not funded by the Australian Government and meets all of its own costs. It is required to pay all government taxes including state, territory and local taxes. It is also required to pay a dividend to the Australian Government.”
http://www.communications.gov.au/post/australia_post/australia_post_history

And what happens when entities go through the process from being public to private, a journey at least half way completed by AP? Workers are made redundant or made to become contractors thus losing holiday, superannuation payments, sick leave etc. Check. Bosses give themselves obscene pay rises. Check. In 2013 Australia post workers received a 1.6% pay rise while the CEO's pay went up a massive 66%.

And Crikey makes this excellent point;

“Some say that Fahour and his fellow executives face a difficult task because of AusPost’s universal service obligation, but that overlooks an inconvenient truth: the money-losing regulated business gives AusPost’s package an incredible competitive advantage. That’s because the package business can use the entire AusPost network, including some 4400 retail outlets (of which 2651 are in rural areas) and the huge network of posties. So while AusPost’s package business doesn’t technically have a monopoly (it faces competition from a number of players like Toll and DHL), none of its competitors has its huge inbuilt advantage, especially with rural and east-west deliveries. That advantage comes from the infrastructure associated with the letter business.”
http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/10/23/is-auspost-boss-4-8-million-salary-pushing-the-envelope/

I repeat we are getting stitched up. The parcel division is getting set up for sale and the the likes of Macquarie Bank will be salivating at the though of the hundreds of millions they will stand to make facilitating it. That is where the so called 'fat cats' live but nary a peek about them from our ideologues.

u ain seen nuthin/yet
Expropriation Is Back - Is Christine Lagarde The Most Dangerous Woman In The World?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-03/expropriation-back-christine-lagarde-most-dangerous-woman-world

I have gone on record that the most dangerous organization is the now French led IMF with Christine Lagarde at the helm, which has presented a concept report that debt cuts for over-indebted states are uncompromising and are to be performed more effectively in the future by defaulting on retirement accounts held in life insurance, mutual funds and other types of pension schemes, or arbitrarily extending debt perpetually so you cannot redeem.

Yes you read correctly, The new IMF paper is described in great detail exactly how to now allow the private sector, which has invested in government bonds, to be expropriated to pay for the national debts of the socialist governments.

http://12160.info/xn/detail/2649739:Topic:1480624

SR

“The APC Act requires Australia Post to perform its functions in a commercial manner."

Pretty much like lipstick on a pig. The only reason that there is no competition in the letter business is because no one else is allowed to collect nor deliver letters. The CEO does not answer to shareholders, but to ministers. His prime objectives are not efficiency nor profits. The employees are public servants with all the perks overtime provisions set up with the cosy relations between Labor governments and the unions.

The delivery of letters does deliver some synergy, which is why it should also be opened to competition. There is still no clear reason why the functions of AP could not be done cheaper and better privately.

What don't you understand SteeleRedux.

In an earlier post I explained that small country towns don't have post offices staffed by overpaid public servants. They have private business, run by business people, paid on turnover.

From figures I saw about 20 years ago, these people cost about half the cost of public servants doing the same level of turnover, & that is before the saving in cost of providing the business premises is considered.

Please explain how this would change if city mail delivery people were suddenly expected to do a days work for their high pay.

"As for talk of "keeping overpaid public servants doing pretend work" that's simply ignorant of the facts. The vast majority of Australia Post employees are as hard working as any of their counterparts in the private sector" says Paul.

Spoken like a confirmed public servant, or union boss. You don't really expect any intelligent adult to believe that garbage do you Paul. All too many of us know how much of their shift is spent delivering letters, & how long the strike would be, if postal delivery public servants were actually asked to do a fair day's work.

REFLUX/QUOTE..<<..That’s because the package business can use the entire AusPost network, including some 4400 retail outlets>>

thats/'owning'/4400\renTED/LEASED-OUTLETS?
at say 300,000/dollars[each franchise/average]
times 4400/is

1,200,million..just property value's
goodwill=times two=2.4 billiON/real-eastate/values-alone

PLUS ASSETS/leases/rents/acces/stamp collection/rareities printing errors postmarks/plates/design/etc-8 billion/plus loss OF a century/of\RENT...15 trillion

its high treason
stealing 15 trillion/plus[future earnings]

plus they selling the royal-mint [put gambling dens/in treasury/buildings/with empty vaults.

forgetting the gold/silver/copper\banks/utilities\pension-funds was stolen..by bail-ins/99-year/leases the bankers\/never followed up/but can you sell..your rental home?..or renta car?

its ONGOING/Colluded/systemised/intrenched\HIGH TREASOn/
its our compulasory super/trying to find asset/they control/and vote with...shares/yet we own/LIABILITY\yet get none of the say.

so angrY/but what is left to say.

we sell/THATS THE JOKE\..WE ALOW THIEVES TO GIVE AWAY/
income producing saevices/then watch the price/of the sevice tripple

selling/out-our future/one public asset/at a time
them budget deficets/to build new over priced/junk/to scam off some more asset.we cant afford pensions[bull]..yet sell of the way they pay their way

its debt free today
tom0rrow these things will need to repay/mortgaged banker intrests
its planed from beginning to end
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/enron-2-0-wall-street-wants-manipulate-state-energy-markets-just-like-manipulates-every-market.html

<<>.(of which 2651 are in rural areas)
and the huge network of posties.>>[aT ONE delivery per week/the junk mail kids will pick up that casual work*/its small/thinkin/but alsoi to get rd of proof of high treason/then debasing the queens coin/during ongoing eternal war

treason/under times of war/gets you shot.

Technology changed and the paperless office has been around for years.

However the public service recruitment and promotion policies have also been effective in obtaining staff that are brusque and unhelpful. Their personal presentation is lacking as well. The procedures for daily business rely on what staff want to grudgingly do, not what will serve customers best.

Australia Post can't be privatised soon enough.

Privately operated Licensed PO's are struggling in Australia. This is despite the fact that they do not operate under the same criteria as Corporate PO's do. At the end of the day it simply comes down to, should AP be partly at least, a service provider, which under community obligations it is now, or should it be fully privatized and operate as a commercial business.
With the recent increase in the standard letter rate from 60c to 70c, AP, despite huge losses in the letter business, offered the disadvantaged (pension card holders) 5 free standard posts per year, plus the ability to purchase 50 x 60c face value stamps pa, this would be at a huge loss to AP. Also introduced a 2 tiered letter service for corporate customers. A priority service at 68c and a regular service at 62c.
Under the Constitution all Australians must pay the same rate for letters, despite isolation, distance, volume etc. If I was a private letter business I would love to deliver letters between Sydney and Melbourne at 70c each, five days a week but I would not be so keen to deliver a letter between Broome WA and Strawn Tas at 70c, five days a week. More like at $5, one day a week.

The NSW Watermelon Greens are on record for nagging - employing emotional blackmail - against the closure of a few uneconomic post offices in Sydney. It is just the headline hunting Greens trying to stir to win cheap votes from the serially upset.

It will be a very long, cold day in Hell before the smug, well-off 'Chard' quaffers who run the Greens will ever worry about the old or country people. The Greens want to take old people's homes from them, encourage them to top themselves because they are old and decrepit, and to tax their deaths. Where country people are concerned, the Greens couldn't give a hoot about family farms or getting rid of narrow bridges on Highway 1 to take some instances. Fire breaks to protect farm fencing? Go to hell with that say the lunar, keyboard environmentalists, the Greens.

What the Greens are up to is simple enough. The Greens are hell-bent on poaching some public servant voters from Labor. Nothing to see here folks, move on.

Dear Shadow Minister,

Come on mate, you are getting caught out time and time again on OLO making uninformed comments then having to try and cover your tracks. It only takes a small amount of checking to get these things right. You are demonstrably wrong on every point you have made.

Firstly the AP CEO does not report to a minister but rather the AP board of directors, the same as any company.

Secondly his primary objectives, by law, are efficiency and profits.

Thirdly the employees are not public servants but are employees of a publicly held corporation and a large chunk are contractors.

I have described the reasons AP should not be fully privatised and you have not given reasons why they should.

Dear Hasbeen,

It might be news to you mate but we are not living in the 70s so the mantra you were trotting out then is so irrelevant as to almost be a parody.

You wrote;

“All too many of us know how much of their shift is spent delivering letters, & how long the strike would be, if postal delivery public servants were actually asked to do a fair day's work.”

Cont...

Cont...

I'm calling this bulldust. You have no idea either and are just making it up.

I know how little contractors in country areas are being paid. We were recently asked to look at the business case for a client who was wanting to buy in as a mail contractor. Their was no way in the world to make a decent living out of it after all the expenses were taken into account. The bloke would have been working for less than $10 per hour without holidays or sick pays or super. This might well be something you want to celebrate but I personally think it is abysmal and something that should offend any Australian who is fair minded. Thankfully there are a few of us left.

It seems what you are really begrudging is people getting a fair wage for a fair day's work, a principle that we should be upholding.

Even metropolitan workers are not on flash wages. I coach a lad who is my child's age having left high school over a year ago and now employed by AP. He is on less than what he was getting at McDonalds and works damn hard for his money.

Anybody complaining about how much AP workers make are talking out of ignorance of mean spiritedness. Ultimately I'm not sure that fully privatising the organisation will have a dramatic effect on already low wages but what I do know is it will impact all of us, particularly those of us who live in rural townships and Australia as an inclusive nation will be poorer for it.

Those it will benefit will be the executive class who pay themselves obscene amounts of money and the bankers who will stand to make a fortune in any sell off. These are the people you and Shadow Minister seem to want to support

I see your math is about as good as the rest of your thinking steelie, if you think 20 years ago was the 70s.

I don't suppose we should expect arithmetic from such a fuzzy thinker.

Beach, as a member of the ultra right, what is your alternative, support for your hero, Jim Saleam and his Australia First Party? Give me the "smug, well-off 'Chard' quaffers" any day, rather than the jackboot brigade.

@Paul1405, Friday, 4 July 2014 9:43:37 PM

No-one here takes your slurs seriously and least of all me. LOL

Now what do you say about the NSW 'Watermelon' Greens and their real agenda: headline hunting and poaching labor public servants' votes?

SR,

Caught you out again. The directors are the direct representatives of the shareholders, as board positions are allocated to the major shareholders. So yes he does report to the shareholders.

And yes, it is also his responsibility to maximise profits and efficiency but not as much as the CEO of a private company who has the duty to shut down or modify unprofitable areas, and expand into other profitable areas. This is clearly not happening here, where he has to consider the political implications of delivering mail every second day, or retrenching workers.

<<No-one here takes your slurs seriously and least of all me. LOL>>
Beach a common treat of a "No Friends Nigel" the use of the words "no-one" giving yourself comfort with the thought that all in someway support you, the feeling of belonging. Of course unless you have surveyed all, you would not know one way or the other, but in your minds eye it is comforting for you to think so. I don't need to hanker for such meaningless comfort. Carry on Old Chap.
Your total fixation with The Greens is also of some interest. Given your ultra right wing politics I am comforted that people such as yourself despise us. We must be on the right track, imagine if you loved us. Its a pity for you that your parties voter appeal dose not extend beyond a little more than nobody.

Paul1405,

It is all about the NSW 'Watermelon' Greens poaching Labor-voting public servants isn't it? That and the usual headline-hunting sensationalism.

Gillard was right to say that the Greens is just a protest party. It has as many factions as members. Gillard would have known too, because the smirking Bob Brown constantly white-anted her government and then got out before the proverbial hit the fan. However, Bob Brown was never in favour of the Trotskyist NSW Greens 'Watermelon' faction.

What the Greens do is sensationalise to score a headline, then forget until another headline is needed.

Talking about sensationalising headlines ...

The Malcolm Turnbull sideshow of last month - comes to mind.
With Mr Bolt and Mr Jones being the prime movers.
The Sydney Morning Herald tells us in one of their
Opinion pieces last month that:

"The Turnbull sideshow was a diversion engineered
predominantly through the Murdoch Press to deflect
attention from the failed budget. However both Bolt
and Jones are simply irrelevant these days because
being a friend of Tony Abbott is not couched in
reality. It doesn't carry a lot of clout with the
voting public at the moment."

We need to ask - why has it taken only 10 months
for the Coalition to go from electoral triumph to
internal discontent. Clearly the catalyst is the budget
based on a stream of broken promises.

Coalition members partticularly in marginal seats know
that the electorate is disillusioned. The discontent
rumbling through the party is only just beginning.
Mr Abbott's lack of respect for the electorate will
end up being his downfall. As it was with Kevin Rudd
before him. Both failed to make the transition from
opposition leader to government. The parallels are
uncanny.

Hi SteeleRedux, thanks for the informed comments re Australia Post, a Postal Services Officer is on less than $23/hour, and is required to do a lot more than "sell stamps" and cop public abuse. Box sorters get even less. My local "postie" told me he walks over 20km/day in all weather, sorry knocks off when the mercury hits 42c. Parcel delivery contractors would be lucky to make $20/hr after expenses. Not one employee of AP is classed as a public servant.
My son is a public bus driver, yep a public servant. from what he tells me I wouldn't touch that job with a barge pole, not for about $65k gross pa including o/t. Works 6 days a week on average, rotating roster, drives in peak hour city traffic with a full load of "cattle", puts up with all sorts of abuse, can work any hours, broken shifts etc, 7 days of the week. You don't know what people are like until you have to deal with the general public, as my son says 99% of people say "thank you driver" when they get on, and "thank you driver" when they get off, he don't worry about the other 1% of ratbags.

<<It is all about the NSW 'Watermelon' Greens poaching Labor-voting public servants isn't it?>> Isn't it what? Beach, I can honestly say I have never ever attended a Greens meeting where "poaching Labor voting public servants" has been an agenda item. I must have missed that one! Were you there?
<<Gillard was right to say that the Greens is just a protest party.>> Beach, according to people such as yourself, Gillard was an habitual liar, so why would you choose to believe that statement. Such a claim would not be unexpected, Gillard as Labor leader would have been dismayed at the loss of voter support for her party. I would think she would be duty bound to make such a call in the hope it might in some way stem the voter flow away from Labor to the Greens. Unfortunately for Labor the flow of voters to The Greens is relentless.
<<Bob Brown was never in favour of the Trotskyist NSW Greens 'Watermelon' faction.>> Just for a moment, I'll assume there exists this "Trotskyist" NSW faction within The Greens, which there isn't as they all ran off years ago, and joined the Spartacist League, who morphed into the Socialist Alliance, or some such organisation. Did you get that from Bob's mouth, or did it come to you in a flash of bewilderment when talking to you very own Miss Marple about those nasty Fabian people. Beach, which is it to be, Bob or Miss Marple?

Given that most important correspondence arrives by email, I would be happy with just one Australia Post paper mail delivery a week. As it is, I pay Australia Post for a Post Office box and only clear it about once a week. About all that ends up in the box in front of my home is junk mail, from people who ignore the "No Junk Mail" sign.

What is more annoying are courier companies which don' deliver to a PO Box, so I then have to make special arrangements for collection. There are now at least two parcel boxes for homes to get around this: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2014/04/my-parcel-box-drops-fees-from-home.html

Australia Post also has their electronic lockers for those who do not have a PO Box: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2014/03/australia-post-lockers.html

least we forget
the most valible by weight=a postage stamp
worth 4 billion/cause its the only one
how much proffit/once they own the printing print error run
plus the archived plates and philitalc wealth/its VALUE IS HUGE

BUT UNDER CAPITALIST HANDS
greed needs be reigned in

once a week/means a letter box deliveRY=GETS 10 BUCKS
CAuse he got the lowest quote

still i like the look of the electric postie bike
YOUR MISSING THE POWER OF A DAILY DELIVER SERVICE[for everything*]

one mob doing it street by steet once a day
home delivery/going cheap/blink and that cash flow and job=gone

to some capitalist stooge/with nothing to loose but over printed yanki paper and jap paper/bying up asset before hyperinflation ,eans your saving value is gone

STOP THIS HUGE HIGH TREASON
their selling the royal mint/like they gave away the commonwealth and the federal reserves/water/powr/telicommunications [and worse dumbed our kids down

but we get the leaders /or\rather looters
we deserved