What happened to Australia Post?

Australia Post has been our national postal service since 1809 and for many, many years, it was a respected business and institution that was applauded for its mail delivery service.

However since the advent of online shopping, it is fair to say Auspost was not able to keep up with demand. It was understandable for a time, because there weren’t any competitors so the speak, but now there are many other postal operators and Australia Post has become a small fish in a big pond.

It’s left a lot of loyal customers scratching their heads – what happened to Australia Post, the business we trusted?

Today news has come out about a review of Australia Post’s delivery contractors (there’s around 5,000 in Oz)– it was found the company did not know what their subcontracted post and parcel deliverers were being paid by delivery contractors, reports ABC.

The review was commissioned after raids and discoveries of employees being underpaid and even the use of foreign labour.

The report, co-authored by legal firm Allens Linklaters, also found Australia Post had little oversight of whether their subcontractors were meeting visa and other work conditions.

7.30 spoke to a number of subcontractors across Australia, and found some were paid just $9 an hour, with no superannuation or other entitlements.

“Australia Post is incredibly focussed on strengthening our existing processes, including improving contractor induction to our organisation and increasing our random audit and compliance checks”, said managing director Ahmed Fahour.

Joan Doyle, organiser at the Communication Workers Union’s postal branch in Victoria, said “We don’t believe Australia Post has faced up to the real problems”.

“What matters is what’s going on on the ground and people are still getting paid appalling amounts of money — working 12 hours a day, six days a week at Christmas time — and are barely making ends meet”.

This latest scandal comes just a week after the struggling courier company revealed they had been given the green light to charge customers $1 for a stamp from January. Before that, we ran an article that showed how Australia Post failed to deliver parcels, and the comments we had were overwhelming.

One commenter said “Note that a performance like this with the Royal Mail was considered a crime! The mail had to go through, remember? Maybe its time for a class action against Aust Post? The other question is why does an item from Britain take only 4 days but from Melbourne 2 weeks?”, while another said, “I find letters in my letterbox that are not for me, with proper written addresses. I have done the right thing, and driven to the proper address and deliver it myself. My mail reaches here after weeks of waiting or not at all. Australia Post is not what it used to be but what other form of postage do we have?”.

A glance at Australia Post’s Facebook page really says it all: customers are frustrated and begging for something to be done. We loved Australia Post once upon a time, so how can we get back there?

Share your recommendations about what Australia Post should do below.