Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I just want to go through a little bit of detail to start with. It was clearly an exceptional year for Australia Post. It was an exceptional year in terms of income, and profit before tax was some $53.6 million—so a very, very substantial increase in remuneration. It's worth noting that the executives and the board are also very respectably remunerated. I think you'll find that the chair gets $189,000. The deputy chair gets $105,000. Non-executive directors get $94,990. The audit and risk committee chair gets $21,000. An audit and risk committee member gets $11,000. The people and sustainability chair gets $18,000. The people and sustainability committee members get $9,000. If you've ever been on a board, you know that the subcommittees are generally occupied by the main board, so those amounts of around $20,000 are added to perhaps the deputy chair's or the chair's income. So these people are very respectably remunerated. If you look at the executive, the salaries are right up there. I don't want to talk about people's names, but, if you look at the CEO, it's a $1.4 million salary. Other executives get $690,000, $720,000, $600,000, $600,000, $700,000 or $800,000. There are about 13 senior executives, and they shared in about $8 million worth of bonuses.

I don't begrudge anybody who's doing a very good job getting a very respectable salary, and if the dividends are paid to the taxpayer, well, it all looks good. But when I go to talk to people about Australia Post, they don't really care what the CEO is getting, but they do care when their letters turn up in someone else's letterbox. We've got delivery speeds for a letter in the same state up to five business days. Clearly, the challenge is to get it there as quick as you can. Metro to metro is up to five business days. Metro to country is up to six business days. Country to country is up to seven business days. Clearly, all of the performance is being driven off parcel freight.

What we relied on Australia Post for—and, increasingly, many more of us don't rely on it. I do the same thing: 'Email me a bill, and I'll direct debit my account.' No-one posts me a bill anymore. But there are still large sections of the community relying on the post. There are probably very few people, apart from my wife, who actually sit down and write a letter, but there are people who are still relying on 'letter in, letter out' for their affairs, and it's taking up to five business days. I had a problem, recently, where someone said, 'You've got a final notice.' I said, 'I didn't even get the first notice.' They said: 'You've got a final notice here. It's going to cost an extra hundred bucks.' I said: 'Well, it would have been handy if you'd given me the first notice. I would have paid it!' Anyway, it's all down to Australia Post, apparently. They can't get a letter in on time. I just want to finish on one point. Senator Abetz was a tad political with the ABC.

I don't begrudge people in Australia Post getting a bonus if it was a Cartier watch that was approved by the board and the CEO was well within her entitlements. I thought the behaviour by the Prime Minister was appalling. And the outcry from all of the Australia Post outlets across the country about her being pushed aside was quite significant.

I thought it was just another example of the Prime Minister shooting from the lip, clearly taking a pub test rather than a commonsense test. I'm sure that the CEO is well ensconced with a competitor of Australia Post now and is probably tearing strips of Australia Post's business. In hindsight, it may not have been a very smart decision. But to punt the CEO in the way that the Prime Minister did, I thought, was quite sad and not becoming of the conduct we would expect from the Honourable Scott Morrison. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.