MEDIA RELEASE - WHY IS PAUL FLETCHER HIDING UNDER A ROCK? - FRIDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER 2020

11 September 2020

MICHELLE ROWLAND MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS
MEMBER FOR GREENWAY


WHY IS PAUL FLETCHER HIDING UNDER A ROCK?
 

The Morrison Government’s latest attempt to distance themselves from the Australia Post Board and its CEO is nothing short of a joke.
 
This mess has arisen because Minister Paul Fletcher tried to use COVID-19 as an opportunistic cover to bypass consultation and implement structural changes that aimed to reduce services and slash jobs.
 
That is why Shareholder Ministers paid the Boston Consulting Group $1.3 million in November 2019, and that’s why they took their recommendations to Cabinet.
 
So let us be clear: these are Fletcher’s regulations. It’s his signature on the label.
 
As for the “anger” with the Australia Post Board who is the Government kidding?
 
The Board is as close as you get to a Liberal Party branch meeting in Corporate Australia.

The Government has repeatedly stacked the Australia Post Board with loyalists and now want us to believe they’re independent and didn’t keep the Minister in the loop?
 
Any functioning Board and Minister would have squashed the inappropriate executive bonus proposal back in July, if that was the will of the Government.
 
Instead, we have a Board stacked with Liberals, and a Minister who permitted them to strategically test how much they could get away with paying senior executives and when.
 
Paul Fletcher can’t walk away from his incompetence nor the problems he created when he placed more trust in the Boston Consulting Group than he did in the workers of Australia Post.

FRIDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER 2020