Read the PM’s lips, they damn AusPost chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo
The Australia Post chairman must resign or be sacked and to understand why you have to look at what transpired on that fateful day October 22.
Terry McCrann
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THE key to understanding what happened on that fateful day October 22 and why the chairman of Australia Post, Lucio Di Bartolomeo, must resign or be sacked is in the precise words used by the prime minister in his public brutalising of then AusPost CEO Christine Holgate.
At around 2.40pm on that day, Scott Morrison said “The chief executive (Holgate) has been instructed to stand aside and, if she doesn’t wish to do that, she can go.”
He did not say that she would – future tense – be asked or even instructed to stand aside. He did not say that the AusPost chairman or its board had been asked to stand her aside.
But that she “has” – past tense – been instructed to stand aside.
This is absolutely critical, because he could only say that – without deliberately misleading the parliament – if one of two things had happened.
One, the instruction by the communications minister Paul Fletcher in his telephone call at 1.10pm to the chairman Di Bartolomeo to stand Holgate aside was considered a mandatory instruction by the government.
That the chairman and AusPost board had to comply; that they had no discretion on the matter.
Or two, that the chairman Di Bartolomeo indicated to the minister Fletcher, that he/the board would instruct Holgate to stand aside.
Last week, Di Bartolomeo told the Senate Enquiry that he did not take the Fletcher instruction as a formal direction.
The AusPost submission to the Enquiry had also stated that the matter of Holgate standing aside was only considered – and decided – at the AusPost board meeting that started at 4pm. Di Bartolomeo’s claims simply do not pass the ‘pub test’. They also prove, in my opinion, his complete unfitness to remain chairman.
No less a person than the PM had publicly announced that his CEO had been instructed to stand aside.
If this was untrue, he had a clear, immediate and indeed urgent obligation to make a public statement correcting the record.
This was an obligation he owed to every Australian, the 26m real owners of AusPost .
It was an obligation he owed, as chairman, very especially to his CEO, Holgate, and all the employees of AusPost; and it was an obligation he owed to something quaintly called ‘the truth’.
Indeed, there is no record – or indeed even a claim by either him or AusPost – that after that PM’s rant, he sought to state the truth even privately either to the minister or the PM.
On the other hand, if what the PM said was true; Di Bartolomeo had already caved before 2.40pm to a demand from the government which was inappropriate, improper and indeed plain invalid.
As I’ve explained - and I believe I’m the only commentator that has - the government can only instruct AusPost to do anything after consultation with the board (not just the chairman). And it has to be in writing.
Clearly this did not happen. So either Di Bartolomeo did not correct a seriously damaging false statement by the PM about his CEO or he had already caved to an invalid demand from that PM.
It has to be one or the other: either renders him unfit to remain chairman.
Further, if the latter, the rest of the afternoon of October 22 was a charade: the supposed chats with Holgate to persuade her to stand aside “in her own interest”; the board meeting to “consider the matter”.
All this is before the really damaging reality that the AusPost chairman did not stand behind his CEO and due process and the best interests of AusPost.
The PM’s rant made her position untenable because he, the chairman actively threw her under the PM’s bus - doing serious damage to AusPost. He must resign or be sacked.
Originally published as Read the PM’s lips, they damn AusPost chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo
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