Australia Post

This is from an email I sent to my local MP: 

Dear Member for <electorate>,

Australia Post is reported (here, on The Guardian website) as saying its letter service is in an irreversible decline.

Yes, it is, and that has been inevitable since the use of email became widespread - which is obvious to everyone who is not paranoid about email (there are risks to be managed, but they are in company systems - and any such risks have not stopped the widespread adoption of email). The incompetence of those who have in charge of Australia Post since then in not adapting to this change is staggering - especially as other options were available.

Australia Post could have had a role in parcel delivery, but their parcel delivery service is so appalling I refuse to buy anything online if it means delivery using Australia Post. We and many others I have spoken to have had instances of no attempt to deliver parcels - just a note dropped in the letterbox, and LIES that no-one was home (yes, we bloody were), or that "COVID laws prevent going to the door" (they don't), and so on. The TRUTH seems to be that pay for couriers is too low and delivery expectations too high. There have been media reports on this, but I am fed up with Australia Post, so I'm not going to try to dig them up now.

One of the other reasons I am fed up with Australia Post is that their staff can be transphobic, racist, and insufferably arrogant. I have emailed you about this previously, and I have now found alternatives to everything I used to do at Australia Post.

Australia Post is not beyond the pale: if it spent money on its parcel delivery service, made sure subcontractors'/contractors' working conditions were fair and reasonable and that they all made genuine efforts to deliver (some do now), and taught its front line staff not to be bigots, the parcel service might be recoverable.

As it is, it strikes many of us as having been deliberately driven into the ground by the neoliberals so that people start using private industry (couriers, etc).

There are other options as well: more secure emails, user friendly post office boxes (the last time I used those I had to make renewal payments on one specific day no matter how much that affected my work and/or life), etc. However, for those to be realised, it needs to be run by human-focused people who are comfortable with the the 21st century and treating workers and customers with decency - not penny-pinching grocers from the 1950s or people reminding us of the bankers who refused to get telephones in the late 1800s/early 1900s because they had messenger boys.

I was going to write an email along these lines some weeks ago when a new head of Australia Post was announced. I had other, higher priorities then so I didn't; well, it's here now for your consideration or not as you deem fit - and I am aware others will no doubt be writing to you on this topic.

No reply to this email is necessary. 

After I sent this I realised I could describe what has been done to Australia Post by privatisation by stealth/forced incompetence - a bit like what has been done to the ABC.