Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about deep and justified community concerns around the slated closure of the Shakespeare Grove Post Office in St Kilda, where I live. This vital community asset has long served as a hub for residents, businesses and older citizens in the local area. The intention to close this post office adds to a disturbing and disrupting trend of closures of essential services in our local area under this government's watch. In October last, year the Greens united with the local community to fight to stop the closure of the South Melbourne Centrelink office. Disappointingly, pleas from the community to the local member and the social services minister to retain this important local service were disregarded and the South Melbourne Centrelink office closed. Now, the community is facing the closure of yet another vital neighbourhood institution on 19 July: the Shakespeare Grove post office in St Kilda. If this closure proceeds, there will be significant consequences for local residents and businesses, who have relied on this essential service for over a decade. Already, I'm hearing from pensioners who make regular trips to this post office for their banking, monthly bill payments and postage needs and who are anxious about the closure of this local service and the disruption it will cause to their daily lives. I'm hearing from community members with mobility issues who are daunted by the prospect of having to travel further to pay their bills and safely receive their mail.

One pensioner in my community who has limited mobility has had the same post office box there for over 15 years. Several times a week, she walks 250 metres to the St Kilda South post office to pay her bills and do her banking following the closure of many local banking branches. For this pensioner with limited income, the closure of this office comes as a real blow. This woman will be forced to walk 1.2 kilometres to St Kilda West or take a tram to Balaclava and will need to find extra money in their already stretched budget for transport to and from a different post office—all of this in the midst of a deep and unrelenting cost-of-living crisis.

I'm hearing from local traders who have survived COVID related financial pressures but are now experiencing significant anxiety around the impact that the closure will have on foot traffic through Acland Court precinct and also their ability to conduct business locally. These traders continue to advocate to the government and Australia Post to reconsider their decision and to explore alternative solutions, such as finding a different site within the Acland Court precinct, in an effort to maintain essential pedestrian foot traffic within the area. To date, their calls and the calls of more than 4½ thousand members of the local community who signed a petition to keep the post office open remain unanswered.

Of course, this isn't an isolated example. It's part of a pattern of postal service cuts and closures that I'm hearing about right across Victoria. Local councils across the state are advocating to protect their local post offices. They're essential parts of our social fabric that service the community and offer some of the most basic and necessary functions of day-to-day life: communicating with friends and family and keeping the electricity bills paid and energy connected.

In a deeply worrying trend, between 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2023, Australia Post closed 15 post offices across regional Victoria and opened just two new ones. Of these closures, about one-third were in regions already lacking many essential services. Post offices are an important part of our civil and social fabric. We can't allow this social service to operate as just another for-profit business. Across the country, many of our essential services, whether they be the provision of early childhood education, energy or postal services, are increasingly being run for profit when they should be being run for us, the public.

Australia Post is a publicly owned essential service that must truly service all Australians, whether they're in the city or the bush. The continued degradation of our public institutions by successive governments must end. By removing civic assets like post offices and Centrelink offices from our neighbourhoods, the government is gradually eroding our civic life. Our community deserves better, and I and the Greens will continue to fight for strong and reliable public and community services to keep our neighbourhoods active, accessible and vibrant. I call on this government to act to keep the St Kilda South post office open and for it to prioritise the benefit it provides to the community over Australia Post's financial bottom line.