Australia Post CEO Ahmed Fahour faced the Senate Environment & Communications Legislation Committee yesterday to be grilled by Senator David Leyonhjelm over the increasing charges associated with sending business mail.
PIAA director of government relations and former politician Mary Jo Fisher describes Fahour’s performance as ‘question dodging’ and says the industry should prepare for further business mail price increases early next year.
“It is clear reading through the lines of Fahour’s evidence that there is going to be an increase soon in business mail,” Fisher says.
“They are going to continue to ratchet up business mail prices, because Fahour says it is the majority of the business and costs them money.”
The questioning was part of the Senate’s estimates process which oversees the performance of departments, including their annual reports. Following extensive briefing by the PIAA, Leyonhjelm took the industry's issues up to Fahour.
When asked by Leyonhjelm if the cost of sending business letters had increased at a faster rate than ordinary mail since 2011, Fahour responded, “I am not prepared with the exact mathematics.”
He went on to say, “There is no question that we have been trying to rescue the losses of letters, of which the majority is business mail, we have lost money every year since 2009 on letters.”
Fahour was then asked by Leyonhjelm if business customers were less responsive to price increases compared to ordinary letters customers.
Fahour responded, “Every business out there is encouraging customers to go online, and whether our prices are at 50 cents or 60 cents, businesses pay a 25 per cent discount compared to what consumers pay.
“Businesses are getting a cheaper price versus a consumer and they are all substituting as fast as they can to digital forms, what we are doing is at least recovering costs from the services we provide.
“At the end of the day the people who have to pay a little bit more to cover the losses are big institutions like the banks, telcos and government itself.”
Fisher also accuses Australia Post of punishing business mail users for problems within the company itself.
“It is not the fault of business mail users that handling business mail costs money, that is Australia Post’s fault,” she says.
“That is what Ahmed Fahour is failing to tackle, instead of going to the heart of Australia Post’s inefficiencies and fixing it he is whacking the users of business mail and the PIAA does not think that is acceptable.”
According to Fahour, business mail currently makes up 97 per cent of Australia Post’s letters.
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