As the performance of Australia Post to date was lacking the urgency necessary to address the threat of the Stoke Street mail boxes disappearing in a puff of insanity, e-missiles were fired at the responsible ministers. To ensure total transparency of accountability the responsibility for Australia Post is shared between two portfolios, Finance and Communications. An ominous mirroring of the apparent fracture between the Launceston Delivery Centre and the Australia Post Contact Centre. The departments were alerted to the festering mess and requested to intervene.
In addition, just in case their automated responses to consider replying were deemed a sufficient response, an e-petition was drafted asking to preserve deliveries to the mailboxes. EN9624 is awaiting approval for signing and subsequent tabling to parliament.
Then came the next Australia Post results of the Australia Post review. It was coddled in the style of a bumbling bureaucrat that had managed to miss the relevance of the increasing list of questions about whether anything was being managed.
Gone was the mandatory expression of empathy for the frustration. It was replaced by an accusation. It had been confirmed that, despite Australia Post being capable of losing mail and posting letters in the wrong letterbox, the two notifications had been sent to everyone.
That the first notification and the initial response of the Contact Centre promised delivery to the property boundary was irrelevant and not worthy of consideration, because Australia Post was improving the service to the community whether they liked it or not by protecting it from the menace of unattended PO boxes.
The investigation revealed that the problem was not just the wanton destruction by roaming hordes of Vandals but also criminal gangs stealing the mail, but not assuredly the first notification of their upgrade to an already impeccable service.
The promise of contact by the Launceston Delivery Centre and the request for a public meeting were not required, because there were already secret plans by a newly formed Delivery Team to consider announcing a retrospective community type meeting with whatever recalcitrants refused to install letterboxes as clearly proscribed as on their property boundary in the prior notification.
This meeting was proposed to be held for the benefit of these deranged yokels with their smocks and pitchforks at the location of the existing post boxes, because as of now this is the preferred location of the out-of-town bumpkins to erect their own individual mailboxes in an incomprehensible jumble along Stoke Street.
Whether the Vandals and criminal gangs are to be invited is not mentioned. Nor whether the police will attend to suppress any hate speech emanating from the ignorant and uninformed as they burn effigies of beloved postmen. The police could also crack down on the crime wave they seem to be unaware of, or the Council may be invited to attend to have some input into the affect on the streetscape they are responsible for or Telstra who has infrastructure that might be affected.
Either way, the community service obligation is for the community to support the undisclosed logistical and commercial considerations of Australia Post as they consider whether they have reduced number of dissenting community types; so that a meeting is no longer necessary. This will be announced in further one-way correspondence at a time that suits the Delivery Team which has replaced the Launceston Delivery Centre with this intricate plan of a parade of a hundred discombobulated post boxes lined up in a motley rag tag down Stoke Street in what the investigator identified as the hole of Branx.
To confirm the inevitable the local press clipping was attached. In the brief article Australia Post heralds a “new service” with no consideration of the existing service and the impact to the existing service.
If the embattled North East Advertiser could afford real journalists they might have reported the touted rationale of extending the “parcel delivery service introduced last year” is a reference to a debacle of parcel delivery precipitated by the closure of the Ringarooma Post Office, because no-one felt it economic to purchase the franchise. This tragedy coincided with the loss of the keys to the parcel boxes so that parcels were no longer delivered. Hence the spin where a forced change to delivery arrangements becomes the delusion of a new service.
The Australia Post redirected parcels for Branxholm residents to their properties and directed the parcels with addresses outside the town to the new Ringarooma LPA. Any inconveniently larger parcels (as deemed by Australia Post even it they can fit into the parcel box), have to also be picked up in Ringarooma by those deemed to be Branxholm residents.
This redirection might reduce the load of parcels awaiting collection at Ringarooma CPA, but still more than the Ringarooma PO pickup when the parcel boxes on Stoke Street were operational for everyone.
It is disingenuous to call these services “new” and not acknowledge the decline in the service provided. That is parcels are no longer delivered to the common parcel boxes. Those outside Branxholm town and the intention to restore that service is mired in the inability of Australia Post to articulate the logistics of where and how private post/parcel boxes are to be installed in a long line outside other people’s properties on Stoke Street.
However the newspaper sleuths didn’t fall for the fabrication of the social collapse of Stoke Street to the anarchists, or mention any problem that necessitated the change to the service, because letterboxes on property boundaries are not immune to desecration by overly exuberant Vandals or being purloined by rival criminal gangs.
Meanwhile the Launceston Delivery Centre is keeping silent on how their original solution reduces what has now escalated to constant criminal activity. The constant evidence of criminality is in the communications of Australia Post with typos, misspelling, grammatical errors, logical contradictions, backflips and failure to directly address concerns. Perhaps the benefit of reducing the crimes is calculated by simply have less target boxes in the same location, Stoke Street, and conveniently ignoring the crime of directing unidentified persons with criminal intent to the property boundaries of the residents?
We are assured by their desire for the change is intended to “occur for the first time once implemented” with a target of “around the end of April at this time” giving “enough time is given for the community to make the change”. Especially when there is a supply crisis due to the oil shock and perhaps the new entity “the Deliveries Team” organising and attending a “community type meeting” with “those outside of the delivery area” and resolving the issues raised. It seems vaguely optimistic!
If and when there is a meeting, will there be answers to this mystery?
Meanwhile; the Branxholm community is condemned to live in fear of the constant rampage of Vandals and criminal gangs targeting their letters and parcels wherever the deliveries are made to. Unless they subscribe to an inconvenient reduced rate PO Box at a Post Office. Australia Post implies this offer is a special consideration for their victims, but actually it is their standard offer to all who qualify.
Meanwhile there is apparently nothing being done about the alleged explosion of criminal behaviour. What sums of money might be involved to protect this protection racket is not known beyond the shakedown for subscriptions by Australia Post making
An offer you can’t refuse?
Australia Post hopes you subscribe, because the alternative under the current instructions for a letterbox it may be in the wrong place and with a number duplicated by another box in the cluster (i.e. same number different street). Assuring the improved delivery service is problem free.
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