John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Again tonight I wish to speak about the issue of the closure of the Glebe Post Office. Australia Post closed the doors of the Glebe Post Office last Friday. I consider this decision by Australia Post to be reprehensible, and I consider the contemptuous way that local residents have been treated by Australia Post since the announcement of the closure also to be reprehensible.

Last night I informed the Senate that by the 1890s the Glebe Post Office was well established and servicing the community with distinction. I spoke of the history of the postal services in Glebe, a history of tension between locations on Glebe Point Road, in the heart of Glebe, or on Parramatta Road, in the next suburb. It is a rich history of community agitation and government decision making based on providing these essential services to the community in Glebe—until now, until this year.

Last night I also shared with the Senate the story of Miss Minnie Knott, who served behind the counter when the new Glebe Post Office building opened in January 1886. I am gratified by the interest of senators and members of the public in Minnie’s career, and I have been asked if I can share with the Senate a little more of her experiences. As a matter of fact, I can. A Mr H. Robinson, formerly postmaster at Summerhill, replaced Miss Knott as Glebe postmaster in 1906. Through no fault of her own, Miss Knott was transferred to a less senior role in the post office. I am sorry to say that this was because of the policy of the day to limit the wage of female employees to no more than £160 per annum.

By the early 20th century, Glebe Post Office was a hive of activity. At that time, the telephone was becoming popular in Glebe and the post office was the logical place to put the new Glebe telephone exchange. A 1909 report mentioned that a room measuring 25 feet by 15 feet, detached from the post office, was operating as Glebe’s telephone exchange, servicing 592 local businesses and residences. In those days, the post office moved with the times. Now, the post office just moves.

The Glebe Post Office was then the centre of the village. The tram used to stop right outside. The bus stops there today. Locals coming home in a cab need say no more to the cabbie than, ‘Turn left at the post office,’ or, ‘Just drop me off a little after the post office.’ Everyone knows where it is. Why wouldn’t they? It has got the now misleading words ‘Glebe Post Office’ in huge masonry letters out the front. The words form the centre point of a magnificent colonnade porch added to the building in 1887 during Ms Nott’s tenure, constructed by Murray Bros, the builders, for just £187. But time moves on, so perhaps I will give a bit more recent history.

My research shows that after the corporatisation of Australia Post in 1889 the Glebe Post Office building was sold in 1990 to Wah Shing Industrial Australia Pty Ltd for $1.36 million. This might have been the beginning of the end, because I have been informed by one source that by 2010 Australia Post was paying an annual rent of $517,000, but I assure the Senate that I intend to get to the bottom of that.

When Australia Post was corporatised by the Hawke government in 1989, the then Minister for Transport and Communications, Ralph Willis, said this during his second reading speech:

It is an integral feature of the reform package for GBEs that commercial performance is the primary responsibility of the enterprises. However, it does not detract from Australia Post’s social responsibility to provide universal service—that is, to deliver its community service obligations. I note that section 27 of the Australian Postal Corporation Act 1989 states that, in view of the social importance of the letter service, the service is reasonably accessible to all people in Australia on an equitable basis.

The Glebe Post Office adjoins the Glebe estate, a vast network of streets and lanes with thousands of public housing residents. Until its closure, Glebe Post Office served those from the estate and did so for those living there for generations. Pensioners, people with disabilities and many disadvantaged people in our local community relied on the post office. They relied on it to cash cheques, pay bills and send and receive letters and parcels. The truth is that many of these people do not have access to a computer, let alone know how to use one. Let me make it clear that there are many residents of Glebe who are simply too old or too sick or too frail or too disabled to make the long trip to the Broadway Shopping Centre. So the decision to close the post office is devastating for those people. It will affect their lives in ways decision makers in Australia Post will never understand, even if they do give a damn—and I have seen no evidence of that. What happened to those words enshrined in legislation by this parliament? I repeat them: ‘reasonably accessible to all people in Australia on an equitable basis’.

With Glebe closing, Australia Post has allocated an additional one full-time equivalent position to the nearest post office in the Broadway Shopping Centre while at the same time removing 3.5 full-time equivalent positions previously at Glebe. In other words, 2½ jobs have been lost. One employee has been redeployed and one made redundant. What a rotten, rotten way to treat loyal staff.

I would also like to express my concern at Australia Post’s decision to close the Turramurra and Woollahra post offices in recent weeks, also in Sydney. While I do not have personal knowledge of the circumstances of those communities, I do support the efforts of local residents in those communities and their parliamentary representatives to hold Australia Post accountable. In the case of Turramurra and Woollahra, there have been no staff additions at nearby post offices. In what can only be described as a pathetic concession by Australia Post, the corporation has agreed to monitor business and queues at the Bondi Junction, Paddington and Wahroonga post offices. No doubt, Australia Post is very, very smug about solving the problems of the queues in the Glebe Post Office. There have been complaints—you can see them in the archives—for more than a century about queues in Glebe. Well, no more complaints, no more queues, no more post office.