The Australian Citizens Party is calling on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to save essential postal services by appointing Angela Cramp to replace the departing chair of Australia Post.
Albanese’s appointment of current chair Siobhan McKenna as Australia’s Consul-General in New York creates an opportunity to install a new Australia Post chair who will address the crisis of mass closures of post offices. Angela Cramp will be able to do what Mckenna hasn’t done—order CEO Paul Graham to stop closing post offices, or fire him.
Angela Cramp is an unsung hero of Australia’s postal service. She was a licensee for more than two decades, until recently, in which time she co-founded and led the Licensed Post Office Group, to represent the interests of the family small businesses who own and operate two-thirds of post offices. It’s no exaggeration to say that Australia Post would have far fewer post offices today were it not for Angela Cramp and the licensees who formed LPO Group in 2013. In fighting to save their businesses from bad management by Australia Post, they saved the network that serves all Australians.
However, today Australia Post is in another crisis, because current CEO Paul Graham and his executive team are trying to close as many post offices as they can, to turn Australia Post into a parcels company. Required by law to maintain a network of 4,000 postal outlets, since 2021 Graham has closed at least 250 post offices, reducing the network from 4,330 to 4,080, and is explicit he intends to close the balance to reduce the network to the minimum. Moreover, a current Senate inquiry is investigating a leaked document that reveals an agenda for “format conversions” that will change post offices from being full-service counters dispensing mail, banking, cash, bill pay, identity and government services, to just parcels agents and glorified parcels lockers. They will still be counted towards the 4,000 minimum points of presence; however, they won’t be real post offices. The 9 September hearing of the inquiry learned that the document shows the Siobhan McKenna-led board has approved a trial of this closure agenda.
As a now ex-licensee, Angela Cramp doesn’t have a conflict of interest that would preclude her from being chair; rather, she would bring to the role what very few directors and new executives of Australia Post ever do, which is decades of deep experience in the running of Australia Post. Not just running her own post offices, but for more than a decade Angela Cramp has represented LPOG to management as Executive Director of LPOG, and on the Australia Post Licensee Advisory Council (APLAC). She’s spent decades at the coalface of Australia’s Post’s service delivery, solving and helping to solve the myriad problems that regularly arise running a complex logistical and retail operation. Current CEO Paul Graham was a transportation logistics executive at Woolworths; other executives are franchise managers from McDonalds and Domino’s Pizza—none have anywhere near Angela Cramp’s depth of knowledge about all facets of Australia Post.
Citizens Party national chairman Robert Barwick, who worked with Angela Cramp to establish the 2021 Senate inquiry into the dismissal of former CEO Christine Holgate, calls her the perfect person for the job: “Albanese needs to fix the post office crisis, and that starts with appointing the right people”, he said. “Angela Cramp is experienced, no-nonsense and would be the perfect shake-up that Australia Post’s board and management need, to stop vandalising the postal network and go back to a commitment to providing essential services for communities.”
About us:
The Australian Citizens Party is a federally registered independent political party that has operated since 1988. The party campaigns for public policy solutions to immediate problems facing Australians, with an emphasis on reversing privatisation and returning to investing in public institutions that provide public services. The Citizens Party had been a strong advocate for postal services since it participated in the 2020-21 campaign that achieved a Senate inquiry into the removal of Christine Holgate as CEO of Australia Post. The party's policies include re-establing a public bank, like the original Commonwealth Bank, to operate full banking services through post offices, as a win-win solution to the twin problems of banks closing branches and post offices strugging to be financially viable.
Contact details:
Robert Barwick, media spokesman
0409 014 265