Senate Inquiry

Today POAAL appeared at a hearing relating to the current Senate Inquiry into certain aspects of Australia Post.We are disappointed that certain Senators chose not to focus on future opportunities for the LPO network during the hearing.Despite this, we will continue to advocate for opportunities to increase LPO profitability.Here is the text of our opening address at today's hearing:POAAL is pleased to note that the basic postage rate will increase from 60c to 70c on 31 March 2014. POAAL and its members strongly advocated for the increase. In fact, at POAAL's urging, 644 Licensees lodged submissions backing up POAAL's submission. This is a great response from Licensees in the extremely short timeframe that was available to lodge submissions.The postage increase will result in increases of almost 17% to a range of LPO ail payments as well as increases to stamp commissions.POAAL is deeply concerned that the Committee may have been given inaccurate and false information, in particular with regard to increases in LPO payments over the past five years.In summary, in the period 2009 to 2013, POAAL negotiated increases of between 15% and 17% for LPO banking commissions, State bill pay commissions and National bill pay commissions.POAAL has also pushed hard for Australia Post to increase payments to the smallest LPOs. We are pleased to say that from 2009 to 2013 POAAL negotiated increases to the minimum income payment at these small rural and remote LPOs each year.In addition to these increases, new transactions have been added regularly, including many identity transactions – trusted services, as Australia Post calls them. These are particularly worthwhile financially to post office Licensees.There are still issues facing our members. We are continuing to engage in meaningful discussions with Australia Post on a range of important issues, as identified by our Licensee members, with the aim of increasing LPO profitability, including:• More Government business• Improved credit arrangements for Licensees, which will help with cash flow• Sequencing of mail• Point-of-sale technology in small country LPOs• Changes to minimum order quantities, which will help regional and rural LPOs, and• Mail Contracts being held by LicenseesFurther, we are also pushing for an extension of the scanning payment to include lodgement scans. We are continuing our long-running campaign for Australia Post to cease its practice of transferring business away from LPOs to corporate outlets.We have had preliminary discussions with Australia Post regarding its proposed Rural Post programme.