Rural delivery the ‘canary in the mine’ of postal restructure

New Zealand post robust defense of a model that knows has flaws has sobering Echoes of the UK post office Scandal writes Maria slay in this week's Sho shine well Maria I've I've seen the documentary and and the drama dramatization of Mr Bates versus the post office and it was really shocking stuff um and a massive corporate Scandal um are there really parallels to what's going on here in New Zealand yeah readers are probably familiar with the the two Doos or the dramatization and the doco that have been shown on New Zealand television screens in recent weeks you know it was massive over 900 postal workers wrongly convicted prosecuted um over this you know it system that was showing up uh Cas they were the only ones they were the only ones showing up these cash losses that weren't real and you know to to this this day they are still fighting for the compensation and obviously we haven't seen anything like that here but we are seeing a big uh sort of change in the way our Postal System operates New Zealand posts announced that it will merge mail and parcel deliveries into one cized model um but this is rural deliveries isn't it this is across the board over the next 5 years they will gradually merge mail into Coura and there will be one network and there's going to be something like 750 job losses and then the other thing that's happening at the moment is it's deed of understanding with the governments up for Renewal and that has to be done by the end of June and so there are a lot of people sitting on the sidelines going well what is this new deed going to say because we're starting to see things like New Zealand post announced the other day that it's cutting Saturday deliveries to rural um customers so thin into the witch you know what what's going on there's a lot of questions being asked and just for readers so they know what does the deed actually include what what does it cover well the deed covers their their service obligations and you know what they are supposed to do so at the moment it's 5day male deliveries to Rural and 3-day to Urban as we know but we don't know what the new structure will be particularly given posts announcements and so look I you know the career industry is watching this with great interest because there's a lot of problems with the rural delivery funding model and so I put a request in to speak to David Walsh the chief executive of New Zealand post and I was just given a one liner uh this does not affect rural delivery and that that just can't possibly be true because they in my opinion because they have signaled as far back as 2013 that they're looking at three-day deliveries for Rural customers and the other problem is we're starting to see examples of how the rural delivery funding model just doesn't work there's been a case in Hamilton um a couple called Danny and Ian Kennedy who ended up losing their run over disputes with New Zealand post and now bear in mind these are runs that these business people pay for in the case of the kennedies they paid $350,000 for what they thought was an exclusive run and in the court papers uh as part of their dispute it's Ave Ed that the funding model was just didn't work they were just basically underfunded for all their labor costs their vehicle costs they ended up working for less than minimum wage so there's problems with that model and The Courier sector are going well is this the model they're going to roll out across Sur if they have less days it's going to be even less viable well that's that's the other thing so if if they were to cut two three days a week uh that would presumably mean half the number of Rural delivery contractors is about 300 560 at the moment uh also you know it's like so the funding model doesn't work now how how would they be making it work these are all questions that New Zealand posters just not answering and a report that was done 10 years ago said if because they get paid this Benchmark rate for delivering the mail if they were to cut it to 3 days it simply wouldn't be worth these rural cers while so how are they going to make it work do you think the court action is y andz post is being fairly secretive about this well the elephant in the room to all of this is that I am aware that there has been another case and involving a group of couriers in another part of the north Ireland the kennedies are in the W and it wasn't just them too I might add there were other couriers that were in a similar position this other group uh it ended up that there was a Professional Services firm that did a report on the funding model and I am told it concluded that the funding model was inadequate and so New Zealand post I believe settled with these couriers and so I have put in a request under the official Information Act to get this report post hasn't denied that it exist existed but they have just said that they have an obligation of confidentiality so it won't be released so again we're none the wiser as to what is going on but if all that that is correct then that that has big implications for The Wider rural delivery sector and also the wider model change that they want to move to and and of course wide implications for the people who live in rural areas doesn't it well that's right and just no one's talking about it at the moment um but you know if you think about it okay so it's not the UK postal Scandal but if you ever we think about some of the parallel things you know this is a corporatized model that's under stress because of change it's what we've got here um this is potentially a nationalized payment system that's gone wrong and individuals are having to Bear those losses uh you know um post is very robustly defending itself and not you know talking about what the implications may be for a system that they know has got flaws so it seems to me there's some serious questions to be answered about what's going on hopefully uh it doesn't end up in a mess of covering thanks for your time Maria thank you to support our award-winning independent journalism subscribe to nb. co.nz