Vale Glebe Post Office Something happened on 19 December 2010 that roused the Glebe community into unified action. No, Australia Post did not make an announcement that they were planning to close Glebe Post Office. Australia Post never had any intention of informing the community. The Communications Electrical Plumbing Union (CEPU) Branch Secretary gave a statement to the Sunday Telegraph. This was the first we knew about the intended closure. On the following Monday, some concerned people decided to take action. They included Speakers at the Rally. From left: Clover Moore, members of the Glebe Society, other residents Verity Firth, Robyn Kemmis, Tanya Plibersek and rally organiser Jan Wilson. and business owners. What ensued was a flurry of letters written to Australia Post Board, our Photo: Phil Young elected members and Senator Conroy. He Convenience Store at 179 Glebe Point Road. In happened to be overseas for the entire time we the same statement, it was noted that additional were campaigning. Meetings were also held services may be introduced. This facility will with all of our elected members and the State only offer stamps and envelopes and does not Manager of Australia Post. meet the needs of the local community. The major public action was to hold a rally The Glebe community showed its strength in on Thursday 20 January to ‘Save Glebe Post mounting a united, strategic and professional 1/2011 February/March 2011 1/2011 February/March Office’. This was preceded by media coverage campaign. Further options for action may in the Sydney Morning Herald, including an include legal challenge and investigation of Opinion piece by Elizabeth Farrelly, the Inner Australia Post Corporation Act. West Courier, and on ABC Radio, thanks to Deborah Cameron. The community was Members can still write to Senator Conroy and informed by distribution of 3,500 flyers and by to Ahmed Fahour, CEO and David Mortimer, posters in shops. An army of volunteers stood Chair Australia Post Board. It is important outside the Post Office talking to residents to ask the hard questions for which we seek and getting signatures for the petition. As answers. a result, we had a very successful rally with - Jan Wilson close to 600 residents in attendance. Speakers For POGA (Post Office Glebe Action) included the State Member Verity Firth, Lord Mayor Clover Moore, Councillor Meredith Burgmann, President of the Glebe Chamber Meet the Candidates of Commerce Sofi Lidgren, and the Federal Member Tanya Plibersek. At the rally, petitions Friday 11 March with nearly 5,000 signatures were handed to Hear what the major candidates have to say Tanya Plibersek in order that she hand them in what is likely to be a close and interesting to Senator Conroy when Parliament resumed. contest for the State seat of Balmain. Police from Leichhardt Area Command were present and gave full support. The community, The Glebe Society will sponsor a 'Meet the as one, sent a strong message to Australia Post Candidates' event in the Glebe Public School and Senator Conroy that the proposed closure hall on Friday, 11 March, 7.00 - 8.30pm. The was unacceptable. The Glebe Society gave its three major candidates will be present. wholehearted support to the campaign, both Candidates will be invited to introduce financially and philosophically. themselves and address a short list of topics The resolve to get full postal services restored provided beforehand by the Glebe Society. in Glebe has failed so far. Australia Post wrote The audience will have the opportunity to to Tanya Plibersek on Tuesday 1 February write down their questions which will be stating that Glebe Post Office would close on 4 collated during a short break and presented to February and that a Community Postal Agency the candidate panel for response. operation would be established in Lucky 7 - Liz Simpson-Booker Pack your picnic basket and potter along to the Underneath the Arches community picnic ISSN 1836-599X Glebe Society Bulletin at Wentworth Park, 5 pm 27 February. See enclosed flyer for details. A publication of THE GLEBE SOCIETY INC PO Box 100 GLEBE 2037 www.glebesociety.org.au Glebe Post Office The history The demise Max Solling’s speech at the rally There it stands in its newly painted livery, no longer swathed in overhead On 21 July 1990 a newspaper adver- power lines and with a freshly paved tisement offered a choice piece of real footpath. There it stands as a symbol estate in St Johns Road, Glebe. It was of civic pride, with its paired ionic Glebe Post Office which was sold to columns and its cool loggia. There Wah Shing Industrial Australia Pty it stands, as architect James Barnet Limited for $1,360,000 on 19 Decem- Some watched the rally from a distance. intended, ready to play its role as an es- ber 1990. The vendor was the newly Photo: Bruce Davis sential service in the community. created Australian Postal Corporation, with its sole shareholder the Austral- They’ve left behind no learnin’ - Purpose-built, spruced up and ready for ian Government under instruction from but they’ve carried off our tin. business for another 100 years... P J Keating, that true believer from Having sold off our Post Office, the And then along comes Australia Post Bankstown. What on earth was happen- Australian Postal Corporation’s hand- in Rampant 7-Eleven Slash-and-burn/ ing? Selling off our Post Office? Isn’t somely paid executives are telling us Frankly-Scarlett-I-don’t-give-a-Damn anything sacrosanct? But this was small we’re not economically viable, they’re mode. time compared with flogging off the going to close down the service and we Sydney GPO. should trek off to that dingy little thing The Glebe community remains affront- What was out of control was a new at Broadway. ed by the lack of consultation over the closure of its beloved and essential Post ideology called economic rationalism, The old style PMG Department post Office; it remains affronted by Australia a doctrine which says that economies, office had everything to do with public Post’s uncompromising stand at the markets and money offer the only reli- service and not-for-profit. The post expense of community; and it remains able means of setting values on any- 1989 corporatised, economic rational- affronted by Australia Post’s refusal to thing, and which set out to destroy our ist P J Keating model is a very different recognise its role as a service provider. public and social institutions to make it breed and it speaks a new language so. Make no mistake economic ration- where the profit motive looms large. Even more disturbing is that our com- alism has a dark side, but whatever we Welcome to the world of Gordon Gecko munity pain will doubtless be experi- create we can change to better serve our enced by many other towns and villages purposes. where CEOs receive obscene salaries in a society where the gulf between rich around Australia over the next few years I can’t think of a more critical social and poor is widening. So what does the as Australia Post continues to ply its institution and amenity at the very heart future hold for the post office? Frankly mantra of self-sustainability, guaranteed of the suburb than Glebe Post Office. things look pretty bleak. The Australian by clever innovations such as dump bins There are compelling reasons why this Postal Corporation’s new CEO, who filled with fluffy toys. crucial amenity must remain. Glebe has comes from NAB, lamented in 2010 Meanwhile, unlucky Glebians will be always housed people right across the they only made $103 million profit, a assessing the new arrangements at the economic spectrum and it is this diver- 60% fall on the previous year. Isn’t that Lucky7 Convenience store and also at sity that gives the place a soul. There shocking. We all know nobody is more Broadway (a queue of 30 people snak- are always customers in the Post Office adept at retrenching staff and closing ing out the door, at last report) and the and among the most regular users are down branches than our trading banks. search for new tenants for the Old Glebe the old and the disadvantaged, and with They are beholden only to their share- Post Office has begun. The matter is new residential developments at Harold holders; staff or customers don’t get a with a local estate agent - our Hands Off Park and elsewhere, the populations in look in. Our new CEO told the Senate sign has been taken down, but is in safe Glebe and surrounding neighbourhoods estimates in October 2010 there will keeping for another issue, another fight. will increase significantly. be 1,000 retrenchments in the coming For the record Glebe has had a continu- financial year; we can only guess the Jan Wilson and the team of feisty ous postal service since 18 June 1852, number of post offices to go. Glebians who gathered around her deserve our admiration and thanks for 159 years ago, when John Clissold be- It’s up to the federal Government, Aus- a vigorous, sustained and multifaceted came its first postmaster. This building tralia Post’s sole shareholder, to tell the protest campaign. Our thanks go opened on 8 January 1886, 125 years Corporation to pull its head in. ago. The proposed closure is the last also to all those individuals in the straw, an outrage which surely would Any organisation’s culture, Richard community who rose so magnificently have stirred Henry Lawson to break into Sennett tells us in The Culture of the to the occasion with letter-writing and verse, in A Word to Texas Jack.