Christine Holgate: ‘I didn’t have to roll over. I had the chance to right the wrong’

This story is part of Sunday Life’s most popular cover stories of 2022.See all 10 stories.

“In your darkest moment, amazing people come along,” says Christine Holgate. For her, that moment began on October 22, 2020 when a Senate estimates hearing in Parliament House heard that, as CEO of Australia Post, Christine had awarded four senior executives Cartier watches worth a total of about $20,000.

Within hours, a fired-up Scott Morrison, prime minister at the time, told parliament he was “appalled” and the gifts were “disgraceful”. “The chief executive … has been instructed to stand aside, if she doesn’t wish to do that, she can go,” he bellowed. A little over a week later, Christine had left her coveted role.

But just as quickly, the “amazing people” Christine refers to came into her life – and often from the most unlikely of places. Billionaire Clive Palmer ran a newspaper advertisement in support of her. Post office licensees started a campaign of sending $5 notes to the prime minister’s office to cover the cost of the watches. When a Senate inquiry was announced into her controversial departure, designer Carla Zampatti rang her to ask, “Darling, darling, what are you going to wear?” Christine recalls. On day one of the inquiry, she wore a jacket hand-picked by the fashion icon herself.

“On the morning of going to give evidence, I did wonder why,” reflects Christine on the daunting task of taking on the government at the Senate inquiry. “But part of it was, all these people have campaigned so much for me. Was I going to let them down?” Her friend Carla had died the week before she was due to give evidence. Christine felt she owed it to her – and all of her other supporters – to fight on.

Months before the Senate inquiry, a report by law firm Maddocks, hired by the federal government, had found no evidence of fraud or corruption in the gifting of the watches. The Senate inquiry itself would go on to find that Christine deserved an apology because she was denied procedural fairness and natural justice, and senators called on Australia Post’s chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo to quit for his role in her departure. Christine agreed with both recommendations. Neither happened.

Fast forward a year to today’s Sunday Life photo shoot and interview, Christine has come through these dark times and is now CEO of Toll Global Express, a $3 billion logistics organisation in Australia and New Zealand. Just last month she was awarded the 2022 Australian Award for Excellence in Women’s Leadership by Women & Leadership Australia. Previous winners include former prime minister Julia Gillard and former governor-general Quentin Bryce.

Christine wears Ginger & Smart jacket and pants, her own blouse, Saint Laurent shoes, and David Yurman jewellery.Credit: Steven Chee

When meeting Christine, she breaks any outdated stereotypes on what it takes to be a powerful woman in business. She is calm and quietly spoken, with a gentle British accent. Intriguingly her manner is both cool and warm at once. It’s easy to imagine that in a boardroom full of people fighting to be heard, her ability to observe and listen would set her apart.

Christine first made her name in business circles when she joined vitamins company Blackmores in 2008 as their new CEO. When she took the job, the share price was sitting at about $10. She immediately identified that operations in Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan were neglected, so focused on sales there before planning an entry into the Chinese market.

“It seems crazy saying this now, but back in 2014, when we were pioneering into South-East Asia and China, most companies were going, ‘Oh, this is crazy, you should be up in the US market,’ ” she recalls. “But it’s a highly competitive market there. In Asia, natural health is part of the DNA of the whole health system.” The strategy paid off. During her tenure, the share price had risen to more than $200.

“My best career moment was standing up and announcing that all employees had got nine weeks’ extra pay that year.”

Her huge contribution to Blackmores’ success was duly recognised, and in 2015, Christine Holgate was the first woman to be named “CEO of the Year” by The CEO Magazine. But she stresses the success of the company was a team effort. “My best career moment was standing up and announcing that all employees had got nine weeks’ extra pay that year,” she says. Rewarding workers for a job well done has always been important to her.

After nine years with Blackmores, Christine accepted the role of CEO at Australia Post. “It was hard to leave because it was like a family, but the timing felt right,” she recalls.

“I remember Marcus [Blackmore, the firm’s founder and executive director] saying to me that going to Australia Post would be like doing national service, because he had been in the army. And I found it an absolute privilege to go there. I grew up in a rural, farming community in England. The post office plays a really important part in keeping that community connected.”

But what she wasn’t expecting to find when arriving at Australia Post was that it was forecast to lose $426 million in the following three years. “It was a slightly bigger economic challenge then I thought it would be,” she admits. “And I think most people don’t realise that Australia Post doesn’t receive any funding from the government. So it has to run as a profitable business in its own right.”

“I grew up in a rural, farming community in England. The post office plays a really important part in keeping that community connected.”

Christine had to look at every part of the business that was making a loss and stop it, unless it was an essential service such as keeping a delivery standard for letters. What became evident from the review was that one of the areas running at a loss was the banking service.

This facility allowed customers to do face-to-face transactions as they would at a bank, but it was costing Australia Post $48 million a year. “Banks were closing branches, and effectively, what we could evidence was that when the banks close a branch, those transactions don’t stop overnight, they just move to post offices.”

She had the choice of either closing the banking service and cutting it off to the communities who relied on it, or making it profitable. “The way to do that was to charge banks a fee. That’s what became Bank@Post.”

The deal secured $220 million for Australia Post but, more importantly,
it kept face-to-face banking in those communities that needed it most. For Christine, these results warranted a reward for the four executives who helped make it happen. “It was a question about: ‘Did you reward four people?’ Yes, I did. I could have rewarded those people with $150,000 each, but I gave them $5000 watches.”

Christine wears Ginger & Smart jacket, Bianca Spender pants, and Saint Laurent shoes.Credit: Steven Chee

So why the outrage from the former PM? “It was just showmanship, that’s the reality,” she suggests. “He’d had a bad week in parliament, which is what he says now: ‘It was a robust day.’ That doesn’t excuse anybody’s bad behaviour. It was awful and extremely disappointing. Particularly when, just the day before, the prime minister and communications minister had thanked me for my leadership during COVID.”

It was what followed that outburst on October 22, 2020, which hit hardest. “Most people see that moment in parliament, Scott Morrison doing his little thing, as the moment which was the worst. It wasn’t. It was what happened in the days later, when [the media] started to make stories up and I had no right of reply. They depicted me in cartoon as a prostitute leaving Scott Morrison’s bedroom. That cartoon actually got seen in England by my family. For me, that was probably the lowest. It showed how far people were prepared to go to discredit me.”

Christine has openly spoken about having suicidal thoughts during this time. “It becomes like an addiction,” she says, still visibly shaken. “It becomes the only thing that you can think of. Even at a table, when people are talking to you about something else, it gets in your mind. And it just feels like, ‘I will be free of this. Everybody else will be free and I will stop all this happening to the people I love.’ I think it has taught me a lot. I think I’m more compassionate having gone through it.”

“I think it has taught me a lot. I think I’m more compassionate having gone through it.”

Christine credits those closest to her, especially her husband, Michael Harding, as helping her get through the dark times. But it was the support of those “amazing people” that really inspired her to take a stand.

“One of the things that I learnt in the process, when all these amazing people reached out to me, like literally thousands of people across the country, was they were writing to me telling me about how they’d been bullied.

“I think what happens with a lot of families is that something happens to somebody in a workplace. If they try to stand up, the organisation shuts them down or makes them sign a compromise agreement. Then that person, maybe they get a couple of months’ salary, but they go off into the world always feeling wronged.”

This is why Christine considers herself lucky. “I didn’t have to roll over. I had the chance to stand up and publicly right the wrong.”

Lifeline: 13 11 14.

To read more from Sunday Life magazine, click here.

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.