Jim Sullivan reveals New Zealand Post's not-so-secret plans.
In April, you may have heard a brief news item in which New Zealand Post announced it was thinking of cutting down mail delivery to three days a week. I immediately sent off Fastpost a letter asking if they would confirm this drastic move. Their Fastpost reply arrived last week and confirmed my fears. NZ Post chairman Michael Cullen has told his minister that the change must be made if the company is to weather a drastic fall in postal revenue.
My letter from NZ Post also included a document headed "Where to Stick the Letters - the NZ Post Five Year Plan".
The file can hardly have been meant for my eyes as it was marked "Strictly Confidential".
Obviously, the NZ Post office boy was trained by the ACC.
An honourable man would have returned the document unread. However, I will share with you the main points of the "Five Year Plan".
The general thrust is that delivering letters is not a profitable enterprise. Instead, NZ Post plans to make its money from running courier services, investing in the email industry and closing another 100 or so Post Shops. There is also mention of selling off the firm's stamp collection.
Ultimately, the goal is to destroy entirely the pernicious habit New Zealanders have of posting letters. The plan is already in operation with the recent increase in postal rates.
The aim is to regularly increase the cost of posting a letter so that in year five a standard letter will need $20 worth of stamps affixed. Each year, the delivery days will be decreased so that by 2015 mail will be delivered only once a week.
It is predicted that these moves will hasten the drop in mail volume so that the original prediction of a 40% decrease by 2018 will become a 99.99% drop by 2017 by which time the sacking of all mail staff will have been justified by the fact that in that year it is expected that the total mail volume will be 13. Six letters from "Disgusted of Porirua" to the prime minister asking for tobacco to be removed from the class A drugs list and seven begging letters from a woman in Bluff to various Lotto first division winners.
"This," explains the Plan, "is not a sound foundation for a nationwide postal service."
Naturally, regardless of it being election year, whoever is minister in 2016 will be pretty well obliged to agree that the whole thing be closed down and that all postal deliveries cease.
Then, says the Plan, the company, "going forward, can integrate for stakeholders the outputs promulgated in the vision statement of 2012".
In other words, remove the "Post" from NZ Post.
Obviously, even the planners are aware of just how drastic this proposal is. In mitigation the Plan makes the following suggestions:
a) Christmas cards: These are seen as a nice little earner and a delivery service will be offered.
The only conditions are that all cards and envelopes must be purchased at a NZ Post Shop and that all cards must be posted by December 1. All cards will be delivered on December 10 by a vast team of very temporary posties. The cost of a couple of day's worth of posties being, of course, far less than paying people for a whole year.
b) Postage stamps: Stamp collectors provide a steady if modest income for NZ Post and it is recommended that commemorative stamps continue to be issued regularly.
To meet the demand for genuine used stamps, 10,000 stamped envelopes bearing the post mark "Wellington" and addressed to "Norman Lurcher" will be taken on a trolley from NZ Post headquarters on Waterloo Quay to the little newsagent's shop around the corner in Bunny St on the first day of release. A NZ Post employee claiming to be Norman Lurcher will pick them up from the shop the next day, or the next week if delivery has been held up.
c) The NZ Post Fitness Network: Recognising the public's awareness of the fitness of postal delivery staff, especially in hilly towns, NZ Post will establish gymnasiums in most of the closed NZ Post Shops. Branded "Flab-U-Less", the network will promote physical health through a regime focusing on running around the room carrying a large bag of flyers for fast-food joints.
Other revenue-earning possibilities are headed:
a) Occasional junk mail contracts to be negotiated with Reader's Digest, Time magazine and other marketing optimists.
b) One-off bulk arrangements at high fees for delivery of election propaganda every three years.
c) Eventual sale of entire operation to a Chinese firm and proceeds to be put towards parliamentary pensions fund.
The document ends with a comment that the minister has indicated informally that he is in full agreement with the proposals.
There you have it. The Last Post is Nigh. Shocking, really.
Someone should do something about it. In the meantime, I'll just email this to the Otago Daily Times.
- Jim Sullivan is a Dunedin broadcaster and writer.
