Australia Post-Christine Holgate affair reflects badly on government

The government’s treatment of Christine Holgate has been utterly inappropriate. But what about the source?

Everything the government has done in relation to Christine Holgate has been utterly inappropriate. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Treasurer and PM-in-waiting Josh Frydenberg is wrong, dead wrong. The government did not act “appropriately” over former Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate.

The exact opposite is the truth. Everything the government has done in relation to Holgate has been utterly inappropriate; and indeed at a more basic level both invalid and, well, just common or garden but always plain stupid.

A word to the wise: just step away, Josh, just step away. You don’t have a dog in this fight — leave it to the three of your colleagues, who are up to their eyeballs in the mess that’s been created.

They are the PM, of course — who is, rumour has it, the tourism boss-in-waiting of Kazakhstan, now that Borat has moved on — and Communications Minister Paul Fletcher.

The third is newbie Finance Minister Simon Birmingham who got the “hospital pass” from Mathias Cormann who had been the relevant Minister on the relevant — all-important and fateful and now badly neglected — day, October 22 last year.

Cormann is of course sunning himself in WA, waiting to head for Paris and the succulent tax-free job, almost for life — secured, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer at a cost which the government refuses to disclose — as head of the now utterly useless and indeed now even arguably malignant OECD.

On the cost of securing that “job-for-life for a mate”, we can estimate that it will have been at least 50 times that $20,000 spent on those watches that so offended Scott Morrison and his lifelong concern for the taxpayer dollar.

This last week we have seen an eruption of “she-said he-said” and “he-said he-didn’t say” about those events on October 22: the day of the ambush/sting. That was, simply, the ambush of Holgate; the sting of the government and the all-too “stingable” PM in particular.

Or, to give him his official title from Bogan Boofhead Central: ScoMo.

On the part of the “she-said” this is perfectly understandable. She — if I can use Frydenberg’s word — appropriately, indeed very appropriately, feels humiliated, badly done by, abandoned and just plain brutalised. All done, totally inappropriately.

I might add, for those involved, or just plain prurient, or indeed just genuinely interested, I have never met or spoken to the said “she”, Christine Holgate.

However, it has had the unfortunate effect of diverting attention away from what actually happened on October 22. In fact, and importantly, two things.

The first is the brutalisation of Holgate. The second, and this has been completely missed, is the sting — which, unfortunately, the PM fell for, hook, line and sinker.

On October 22, Holgate got ambushed by Labor senator Kimberley Kitching over those infamous Cartier watches. That led to everyone in and around Canberra quiet literally losing their minds.

Accept, for the purposes of my point, that the CEO of AusPost handing out four watches with a total value of $20,000 as a “thank you” to four executives for sealing a deal that would deliver AusPost $80m-plus every year, was wrong: did it really warrant the outrage?

And did it warrant, the step taken by both the PM and the chairman of AusPost — the effective, immediate, sacking of Holgate?

Oh, sure, they asked her to “step aside” while an “inquiry” was held into the watches. You have to be a complete idiot, on the same level as PM and the chairman, not to understand such a “request” sacked her.

The AusPost chairman, Lucio Di Bartolomeo, in clear breach of both his statutory responsibilities as chairman of AusPost and as a chairman of any corporation, went along.

Here’s the point. AusPost is a separate legal entity which operates under its own act of Parliament. The two “shareholding ministers” (communications and finance) and only those two can make directions to the board.

Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

I doubt that any such direction in this matter would have been valid; but that aside, it is quite clear they did not make any valid direction under the Act, to order or even “request” her suspension, as Ministers Fletcher and Cormann purported to do.

Before making such a direction, they were required to “consult” with the AusPost board. Not with the chairman, but with the board.

It is blindingly clear there was no such “consultation”; and they made no such direction, valid or invalid. The request or order to suspend Holgate was at least inappropriate and arguably completely invalid.

It is telling — an all-but admission — that both submissions to the Senate inquiry into this disgraceful affair, from finance and communications, made no reference to any such October 22 direction.

They did refer to the inquiry, and only to that inquiry, called by the Ministers on that date; and nothing more.

Yet the AusPost submission refers, without comment and certainly no denial, to the “direction by the Minister for Communications to the chair of Australia Post on 22 October 2020, that the CEO of Australia Post, Christine Holgate, be stood down”.

So on what valid basis was Holgate asked — instructed — to stand down? Why didn’t her chairman stand with her — and with the best interests of both AusPost and the public — against inappropriate and indeed invalid pressure from Canberra?

Any such valid direction from the Minister to AusPost has to be put before both houses of parliament within 15 sitting days. Where is it?

What we had was a “demand” by a panicked, “stung”, PM that Holgate stand aside; the Communications Minister demanding that of Di Bartolomeo; and the chair, utterly inappropriately, folding like a cheap pack of cards.

True, not surprisingly, as there isn’t a spine between the eight invertebrates nominally directors of AusPost.

But what of Senator Kitching, who ambushed Holgate (and Morrison), with detailed knowledge of the watches? How exactly did she get the information?

I suggest that pursuing the answer to this would bear very, very fruitful investigation. Kitching is a member of the Victorian right.