Those " Watches " Fiasco !

 It seems that the sacking of Christine Holgate as the boss of Australia Post is coming back to haunt the Prime Minister.  Once again our big four greedy banks are cutting back by closing branches and removing ATM's  from public streets.

In particular, the banks are losing interest in providing services to country towns. Instead of providing the services people need, they want to drive most forms of financial transactions onto computer contact which greatly enhances their profits.

Ever falling letter rates and the vastly increased price of stamps was making Australia Post a dwindling asset and the government feared that closure would send thousands of employees who ride motorbikes and deliver letters to households onto the dole queue.

In desperation, they lured Christine Holgate from the private sector and hoped private sector magic might save the jobs at Australia Post.  It would take new thinking and private sector initiative to do just that, and Christine Holgate's mind was equal to the task.

She turned Australia Post into a bank, and that was an incredibly complex negotiation with the states and territories. All the people manning post offices all over Australia will keep their jobs and the government will be spared the anguish from closing down an essential service.

Christine Holgate achieved this miracle by the negotiations of her four top lieutenants and in true private sector reward she  presented each with a Cartier watch, which represented an outlay of $20,000.  That fell outside the guidelines of the public service and sent the Prime Minister into a rage.  He used the power of his office to influence the government appointed Post Office board to force Ms Holgate's resignation.

Now it seems the wheel is making a full turn.   The big four banks are closing branches in city suburbs and country towns despite a big section of the public still preferring to do their banking on a face to face basis. Christine Holgate got it right when she undertook the difficult negotiation to turn the Post Offices into a bank.  It looks like the Post Office bank will be the only bank in many suburbs and country towns.

The government sought private sector ingenuity to get it out of trouble, and then reneged when private sector rewards were bestowed on the talented executives who made this success possible.  It is a sorry story of government ineptitude and Ms Holgate is using the courts to validate the integrity of her actions.

We live in an ever changing world and the rigidity of the public service will need to give way to private sector methods to solve many problems.  That will not happen if people recruited to save faltering services are crucified for using private sector thinking to solve these problems.

The Prime Minister should at least admit that he was wrong, and extend a public apology to Ms Holgate.