Australia news live: Christine Holgate says she was ‘bullied’ out of her job as Australia Post boss

I know you will appreciate this and I apologise that I was never able to speak up before, because I do appreciate you’ve asked me many times. But we are silenced. We are told very clearly that we are not allowed to speak in it.

I think even at the last Senate hearing on March 23, when several people round this table asked questions, the Senator, Senator [Jane] Hume, who was sitting here, stopped those questions, and stopped Australia Post being able to answer them.

I believe this is an important review, we should stop having secret reviews. Australia Post is an asset for all Australians.

Senator, I actually think the implications are worse than what you think, if you don’t mind.

…It talks about 190 post offices to close. You see, there are 4,327 post offices or postal points. Of those, approximately 725 of them are what we would call… Australia Post own them.

They are predominantly metro, so the 100 and something you are referring to are the ones that Australia Post own.

…Then, if you step back from that, there are approximately 3,600 which belong to mums and dads just like Angela [another witness at the senate inquiry] people who, on average, invest $1 million to take a post office licence.

They can’t force their closure so easily but if they take away their services, those people will go bankrupt and I’m sure the reason why the post offices have campaigned so passionately behind me is because they know it’s not just about Bank at Post, it’s about them remaining viable and being able to pay their debts, so those numbers are not inside this submission because if the Government makes arbitrary decisions that impact the community post offices, they do not have to deal with the debt. The mums and dads do.