AusPost board nailed as Christine Holgate cleared by investigation

The investigation into the most infamous Cartier watches in Australia’s history makes it clear where the actual failures were, says Terry McCrann.

It has gone completely unnoticed but the investigation – my apologies, formal investigation – into the most infamous Cartier watches in Australia’s entire history, not only cleared then and now former Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate of any wrongdoing, but was utterly damming of the AusPost board of directors.

As a consequence, in my judgment, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the five current directors who were on the board when the watches were given in November 2018 must now resign.

I would add, as I have been arguing, that the current chairman, who was not on the board at the time, Lucio Di Bartolomeo, must also resign for spinelessly throwing his CEO under the bus under utterly inappropriate – and utterly hysterical - political pressure from the prime minister.

It is of course not in the least surprising that the report’s gone largely unnoticed, because it was “slipped out”, unheralded and unexpected, late on the Friday before the Australia Day long weekend, and was impossible to find on the relevant departmental websites.

Further, neither AusPost nor its chairman have said a single word in response to the report into a controversy which cost it its CEO and leaves it still without a CEO more than three months later.

The key conclusion of the “investigation” by law firm Maddocks which relates to Holgate - although it did not refer to her by name or position – was that: “there is no indication of dishonesty, fraud, corruption or intentional misuse of Australia Post funds by any individual involved”.

Instead Holgate was “convicted” of failing the notorious – and utterly ridiculous - so-called “pub test”.

Former Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate. Picture: John Feder

Maddocks ruled there was “a tacit acceptance by interviewees that the purchase and awarding of the Cartier watches was not consistent with public expectations of board members and executives” of an entity like AusPost.

I’m impressed that the esteemed lawyers at Maddocks have such a deep knowledge of “public

expectations”; they must spend a lot of time in the public bars of pubs.

But in reaching that – valid or not - conclusion, Maddocks explicitly, if reluctantly, exposed the failure of the AusPost board to both put in place rules that applied such a “pub test” and then to police them.

Bluntly and simply – for the elucidation of those esteemed lawyers at Maddocks and the board of AusPost, the PM and indeed everyone else – if Holgate should not have awarded the four Cartier watches worth in total all of $20,000 , it was the responsibility of the board to have put in place policies that had previously made that clear.

Very simply, it did not.

Holgate did not transgress an explicit board policy. Her purchase of the watches was approved by the responsible AusPost executive, the chief financial officer. The watch purchases were known by the then chairman John Stanhope, who co-signed with Holgate the cards given with the watches and he was present when they were given.

Further, at no stage was any objection raised by anyone, and certainly not by the board, in the two years from when they were given in November 2018 until it blew into public two years later at Senate Estimates in October 2020.

As Maddocks explicitly spelt out, it is the board, as the accountable authority, that had the obligation to govern AusPost to promote “the proper use and management of public resources” and “to maintain an appropriate system of internal control for the entity”.

Time and again Maddocks – in my judgment, rather unwillingly – spells out the board’s failures to meet that obligation. Any failing by Holgate was THEIR failing.

The watches cost $20,000. The PM said it was an “abuse of taxpayer money”. The Maddocks report apparently cost $350,000 of taxpayer money.