Australia Post chairman must follow Christine Holgate out the door
The departure of Christine Holgate as Australia Post chief casts a long shadow over the chairman of the postal service, who must now tender his own resignation, writes Terry McCrann.
Terry McCrann
Don't miss out on the headlines from Terry McCrann. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Christine Holgate’s departure does not let Australia Post chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo off the hook. Indeed, her departure damns him — he must immediately follow her out the door.
The whole sorry saga has shown he is just not up to the job of chairing a major corporation. He has demonstrated zero understanding of the role and responsibilities of a company chairman.
And so as a consequence, he’s failed to discharge those responsibilities; he has failed AusPost and he has failed its owners — who are the Australian people and not someone called Scott Morrison.
Indeed the way Di Bartolomeo has allowed the Prime Minister to improperly hound Holgate out of AusPost was appalling. He had a statutory duty not to take orders from the PM; instead he acted on the PM’s orders immediately.
The timeline is instructive and damning.
On October 22, four Cartier watches became the most infamous watches in Australian history, when Holgate told Senate Estimates they’d been given — two years ago — to four AusPost executives in recognition of the work they’d done to secure the most important deal in AusPost history.
The deal with three of the big four banks injected $66m into AusPost and secured a critical revenue stream for all the franchisees that actually run post offices.
Holgate said the watches added up to a cost of all of $12,000. This would later that same day be corrected to $20,000 in a series of — disturbing and quite inappropriate — statements by Di Bartolomeo.
Ambushed ahead of question time, the PM went hysterically ballistic — demanding Holgate stand aside while an inquiry was done into the watches and if she wouldn’t then “she could go”. The very first thing, the very first thing, that Di Bartolomeo should have said is that it is not the PM’s right to demand the sacking of an AusPost CEO or even to demand she stand aside while an inquiry took place.
Let me tell Di Bartolomeo what he clearly does not understand. AusPost is an independent statutory authority which operates under its own act of Parliament.
The board and only the board is responsible for its governance, for hiring — and firing/suspending — the CEO. The PM has zero — let me spell that out for the hapless and hopeless Di Bartolomeo, Z-E-R-O — right to tell it to do anything.
As I detailed last week, only the relevant designated minister can instruct AusPost to do anything, but he/she can only do that after consultation with the board and only on matters of significance, that are “necessary in the public interest”.
There is no way that $20,000 of watches — even those of the Cartier brand — meets that test.
In short, there was no way that any frothing pollie, whether PM or mere minister, had the right to tell AusPost to do anything in this regard.
Yet on that very same day, October 22, Di Bartolomeo announced that Holgate would stand aside while the investigation took place.
That cannot be seen other than as bowing to the PM’s — completely improper — demand. There was no reference to ‘consultation’ with the relevant minister. Indeed, no reference to any form of appropriate process within AusPost.
Di Bartolomeo made two statements on October 23.
In the first, he referred specifically to the board meeting for the first time that day — thereby confirming that Holgate’s standing aside the previous day was not a consequence of board action.
This statement also detailed that “a check of Board papers and minutes … show the then Board was not asked to approve or note the purchase of those Cartier watches … and that these papers and minutes do not record any subsequent reference to the purchase”.
This partial disclosure of the events of two years ago when the watches were given is, at the very best, an exercise in pre-empting the inquiry; but arguably an exercise in further sliming Holgate.
A second statement from Di Bartolomeo on the 23rd raises more disturbing questions.
It said: “I have become aware of further details of the purchase and wish, as a matter of urgency, to clarify that the purchase was of four items costing $7,000, $4,750, $4,400 and $3,800 totalling $19,950 (including GST)”.
So, there’s a clear record of the purchases but the board officially “knows nothing”, Sergeant Schultz style.
The bottom line is that Di Bartolomeo has bowed to a hysterical PM to quite improperly force first the suspension of and now the departure of his company’s CEO — precisely when, in his own words, it is entering the “most challenging period in the history of the organisation”.
Could you ask for a more damning statement — out of his own mouth — of his own failure?
He has shown himself to be completely unfit to continue as chairman. If he has the slightest shred of self-awareness he must resign and resign now.
AND ANOTHER THING …
Boy, today was just supposed to be about the race that stops a nation.
Instead, we embark on the most consequential 24 hours or so in not just the nation’s history but the entire world. It ‘starts’ at 2.30 high above Martin Place in Sydney when the RBA makes its most insignificant rate change (0.15 per cent) in its entire history but which will be surrounded by the most consequential things it’s ever done.
The day then crosses the Pacific backward to the US election — and the rest will be history.
Originally published as Australia Post chairman must follow Christine Holgate out the door