Australia Post chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo’s testimony to Senate committee is hard to believe
AusPost chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo comes across as a really nice guy but someone who has been totally out of his depth since the Cartier watch scandal erupted in October.
Terry McCrann
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The – still - chairman of Australia Post Lucio Di Bartolomeo would have us believe a series of things which are really only believable if you live either in an alternative reality or on another planet.
The first is that Christine Holgate was not asked to stand aside as AusPost CEO back on that fateful day October 22 because the prime minister demanded it in his - what can only be described as - full-on rant in parliament and the communications minister personally phoned him, Di Bartolomeo, to instruct (or ask) him to tell her, Holgate, to stand aside.
No, no, not because of any of that; it was because he, Di Bartolomeo, and they, the board, came to their own quite separate conclusion that it would be in Holgate’s best interest and the best interest of AusPost for her to stand aside while the so-called independent investigation into those infamous watches took place.
Second, that it was entirely feasible for Holgate to stand aside and that this would not or should not be taken as he, Bartolomeo, and the AusPost board acting on, far less caving to, the direct, very public and very aggressive demand of the PM. Why would you possibly connect the two?
Third, that Holgate could be stood aside in the circumstances of what happened so publicly on October 22, go through the humiliation of having her expenses probed, and then some four or so weeks later, just pick up as CEO where she had “left off” on October 22.
That in particular, CEO and chairman could go back to the intimate, trusting relationship they had had, at least as he saw it, up until October 21 – subject only to “what the investigation uncovered”.
Again, who could possibly find that odd: chairman throws CEO under PM’s bus; she gets dragged along under it for a few weeks; when she pops out the other side – like a dog I once had did rather amazingly from the back-end of a car – the two of them would be all cosy-matey again.
Watching him, Di Bartolomeo, appear Tuesday before the Senate committee probing Holgate’s (effective) sacking, I had to conclude that he really, genuinely believes all that.
He also came across to me as a really nice guy; but also as someone who was totally out of his depth. To call him naïve would be to render the word meaningless. Indeed, he makes the Peter Sellers character Chauncey Gardiner look like a slick insider sophisticate.
Back on October 22, when communications minister Paul Fletcher phoned him, straight out of Holgate’s ‘unfortunate’ Cartier-clanger appearance at Senate Estimates, Di Bartolomeo had one of two choices.
The choices and the only decision he had to take were made even more clear-cut after the PM went full-on Holgate ballistic.
He and the AusPost board could accept the totally inappropriate and so public instruction to sack Holgate – which, on this planet and in this reality, it was.
Or he, very personally and very importantly, could stand behind her and behind due process.
That, very simply, the government could have its (entirely political) investigation into the watches but in no circumstances would he ask – or allow – Holgate to stand aside while it was going on; and not until, and unless, she was proved to have done something sufficiently wrong to validate a reprimand or penalty.
That, very specifically, as chairman, he was not going to deprive AusPost of its CEO for four-eight weeks because the government felt some political heat and a PM allowed himself to be stung by an opposition ambush.
There’s been all this crap about the watches “failing the pub test”.
I’ll tell you what fails the common sense test: all the crap we’ve seen on and since October 22.
Originally published as Australia Post chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo’s testimony to Senate committee is hard to believe
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