Australia Post chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo stands his ground

Australia Post chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo has declared he will not resign after former chief executive Christine Holgate called for him to be sacked.

Australia Post chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo on Tuesday. Picture: AAP

Australia Post chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo has declared he will not resign after former chief executive Christine Holgate called for him to be sacked, accusing him of misleading parliament and bullying her out of her job.

Meanwhile, the federal opposition has demanded the entire Australia Post board go.

But Mr Di Bartolomeo, who succeeded John Stanhope as chairman in 2019, said if he were to leave, it would weaken the government-owned organisation.

“Australia Post has been taken through a very difficult patch and my view is, and until I believe differently, I will not be resigning,“ Mr Di Bartolomeo told a Senate inquiry into Ms Holgate’s departure on Tuesday.

“I certainly don‘t believe it would help. I think it would further hinder the organisation going forward.”

On Monday – a day before the Senate inquiry began – Australia Post appointed Ms Holgate’s replacement, Woolworths supply chain boss Paul Graham, triggering a rebuke from inquiry chair Sarah Hanson-Young.

Mr Di Bartolomeo said while Ms Holgate had been “treated abysmally”, Australia Post did not plan to apologise to her.

“I believe the board and management did the right things by her. I don’t believe Australia Post owes her an apology.”

Ms Holgate offered to resign in November after “the 10 most harrowing days” of her career, after it was revealed – under questioning from Labor – that she rewarded four senior executives Cartier watches worth a total of almost $20,000 in recognition for securing a banking deal worth $66m a year in 2018. Ms Holgate said she never agreed to stand aside and Scott Morrison “humiliated” her by demanding she stand aside or “go” while the Cartier gifts and other expenses were investigated.

“The environment … created at the time, from that afternoon on through parliament and the media thereafter, and … everyone else who bought in, certainly created a set of circumstances that made her job and her life very difficult,” Mr Di Bartolomeo said.

But he stopped short of suggesting the Prime Minister should apologise to Ms Holgate.

Ms Holgate called for Mr Di Bartolomeo to resign or be sacked, claiming he lied about her agreeing to stand down from Australia Post, about reading a “secret” Boston Consulting Group report commissioned by the government about Australia Post, and over executive bonus payments. “You cannot have a chair who misleads the executive, misleads ministers and misleads the board,” she said.

Mr Di Bartolomeo said he had never lied to the Senate and had corrected previous evidence that was “not 100 per cent correct”.

Opposition communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland called on the board of Australia Post to go after Ms Holgate’s testimony. “The board of Australia Post is a dysfunctional swamp of would-be Liberal hacks, politicians and mates of Scott Morrison. It clearly has a serious problem with its own governance and it clearly needs to go.”

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese used Ms Holgate‘s testimony to attack the government and said she had been treated differently to beleaguered ministers such as Christian Porter and Linda Reynolds. “I did regard the Cartier watches as being inappropriate. But the fact is it was Scott Morrison who stood up in parliament and actually, for a change, made a strong decision,” he said in Perth.

“The fact of the matter is if you are a cabinet minister in Scott Morrison’s government, you can do whatever you like. And that contrasts with the actions against Christine Holgate.”

The Prime Minister’s office declined to respond to Ms Holgate’s claims on Tuesday.