Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

John Maynard Keynes said: 'When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?' Well, I tell you what: I'm going to change my mind on my previous statements about Christine Holgate. I think I was pulling the wrong rein. I don't think she's a bad person; I think she actually did a really good job, and I'll tell you why. I've been speaking to some of the country post offices, and they said if it weren't for Christine Holgate they would be broke. She was the one who managed to carve out a deal from the banks so that they got paid a fair amount, which is what kept their businesses going. We've got to make sure that these country post offices aren't bundled up, cut up and sold off so that we don't have postal services in regional areas, and we've got to be really careful that we don't fall into the trap of the 'pile on Christine' brigade, because that's not where the real game is. The real game is making sure that we keep these post offices open, and I'll tell you why: because the average investment by the people in those post offices is about $1.1 million per investment. That's why these mums and dads are a bit concerned about losing Christine Holgate. In many of these communities, you don't have street deliveries. If you don't have a post office, you don't get the mail. What they're worried about is that there's a Boston Consulting Group report—we haven't seen it—that we believe is going to say, 'Sell off the post offices.' What we're going to say, in regional areas, is: how on earth do we now get the mail?