Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to table a petition. This petition of certain citizens of Australia draws to the attention of the House that Australia Post have sold the Warrnambool Post Office Timor Street building to the Warrnambool City Council. Whilst an agreement is in place to retain private mail boxes, the business centre will be closed and the smaller 169 Koroit Street premises will become the city’s main Australia Post business centre. This already small site will not be able to provide an adequate counter service for a city with a rapidly growing population presently exceeding 33,000 people. At Timor Street, as a considerable convenience to business people, general customers and senior citizens, adjoining streets provide 26 designated free 15-minute car spaces, including two disabled spaces—something that seems impossible in relation to the Koroit Street location.

The present size of the Koroit Street business centre will surely not enable remodelling to allow transfer of similar counter space to that used at Timor Street. Both premises are already barely adequate at many times of the day and there are frequent lengthy queues. We therefore ask the House to ensure Australia Post negotiates to retain a satisfactory business centre in Timor Street, where it has been most satisfactorily located since 1857, or else provide an additional adequate alternative.

This petition has 3,331 signatures. It is a sizeable petition. I would hope that Australia Post will take note of it and do the right thing. The consultation process around the closure of the Timor Street post office was nothing short of disgraceful. There was no consultation with the community at all. The community was taken by surprise with this closure. It was announced around Christmas time, when I think it was hoped there would be as little notice of this decision as possible. Warrnambool has a growing population—33,000 people and expanding. It has to ensure that it has proper postal services to adequately cope with this expanding population. Closing the main post office which, as the petition states, has been there since 1857, is just not good enough. Australia Post should have consulted with the community before taking this decision.

I congratulate Judy and Bill Poynton, who have organised this petition. They came to see me and asked what needed to be done to try and overturn this decision because I had put an advertisement in the local paper asking people whether they thought postal services were adequate for the local community. I have not come across anyone who says that the services are adequate, so how closing the Timor Street post office is going to help postal services in the Warrnambool and surrounding communities is beyond me. I call on Australia Post to negotiation with the Warrnambool City Council, who they have sold this building to, to make sure that they can maintain adequate services at the post office. If they do not, I will put the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, on notice that I will be calling on him to take some action on this matter.

It is not good enough that Australia Post comes along and just makes a unilateral decision to close a building without adequately providing alternative services and without talking to the local community and saying, ‘What are your needs?’ including ‘What are your parking needs and what are your disabled parking needs?’ This decision by Australia Post has caught the community by surprise. There is outrage, especially among older citizens, that they would take away what is a convenient location which they have been using, some of them, for 75 years.

I congratulate Judy and Bill Poynton. I ask Australia Post to negotiate with the Warrnambool City Council to make sure that there are adequate services provided at the Timor Street Post Office. I also say to Senator Conroy, ‘Beware. If Australia Post do not make the right decision here, you need to intervene and fix this mess.’

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The petition has been checked by the committee and is in order. It is received pursuant to standing order 207B(2).

The petition read as follows—

To the Honourable The Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives

This petition of certain citizens of Australia draws to the attention of the House that Australia Post have sold the Warrnambool Post Office Timor Street building to the Warrnambool City Council and whist an agreement is in place to retain Private Mail Boxes, the business centre will be closed and the smaller 169 Koroit Street premises will become the city’s main Australia Post business centre. This already small site will not be able to provide an adequate counter service for a city with a rapidly growing population presently exceeding 33,000. At Timor Street, as a considerable convenience to business people, general customers and senior citizens, adjoining streets provide 26 designated free 15 minute car spaces (including 2 disabled)—something that seems impossible in relation to the Koroit street location. The present size of the Koroit Street business centre will surely not enable remodelling to allow transfer of similar counter space to that used at Timor Street. Both premises are already barely adequate at many times of the day and there are frequent lengthy queues.

We therefore ask the House to ensure Australia Post negotiates to retain a satisfactory business centre in Timor Street where it has been most satisfactorily located since 1857 or else provide an additional adequate alternative.

From 3,331 citizens.

Petition received.