STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator CADELL (New South Wales—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (13:42): I rise to talk about the licensed post offices throughout Australia and media reports last week about the LPO reimagined document that came out of the Australia Post, where they're talking about what they will see about buybacks and about fewer licenced post offices across Australia. There's a requirement under the Act that they must have 4,000, but I feel that, in the way the documents are going and the way the debate's going, an LPO reimagined will not actually be a licensed post office at all.

I come from a coastal town of about 1,500 people called Redhead. It's a nice little place south of Newcastle and Lake Macquarie, and we have a licensed Post Office. You go there, you can pay your bills, you've got Bank@Post, you can have a flutter on your lotteries, you can get your mail, and you can pick up parcels.

It's important for the community. It's next to the bakery. There are four shops in a row there.

That's our little patch of heaven. I need my LPO, and communities need the LPO. In the Farrer by-election, I was down in Coleambally, and, for reasons beyond the post office's control, the local LPO was forced to close.

They moved package pick-up into an adjacent shop, but it's not the same as an LPO because people are restricted in what they can and can't do. Australia, regional Australia especially, needs a fully functioning licensed post offices. As I said, they need to be able to pay their bills.

They need to be able to use Bank@Post. They need all of those services they can possibly get. We're hearing more and more about these buybacks coming, with parcel lockers replacing these things.

That is not good enough. That is not what we expect. What I don't want to hear is that a parcel locker or a parcel pick-up is qualifying as an LPO under the guidelines that say how many they have.

I'm also concerned are the timings. In estimates, the CEO showed up on 28 May and said there are no closures going forward, but, just two weeks earlier, the board had approved another plan to go forward and this document. It is not good enough.

Australians require this service, regional Australia especially. Bring back more LPOs.