Australian women urged to wear white today to mark their respect; licensed post offices around the country pausing for a minute’s silence to show their support — welcome to the weird world of the martyrisation of corporate executive Christine Holgate.
Right down to the eve of the keenly watched Senate inquiry showdown between the former Australia Post CEO and its current chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo, the soap opera continued.
The whole point of the Senate inquiry, instigated by Holgate supporter Pauline Hanson, was presumably to right the wrong of her ousting. So the chairman’s decision to announce her replacement, former Woolworths executive Paul Graham, on the eve of their appearance at the inquiry only fuelled further outrage.
While the conflicting evidence will no doubt be more riveting than illuminating, we should perhaps put the whole thing into a bit of context. After all, a boardroom battle between a chair and dumped CEO is not usually the stuff of such widespread and popular uprisings.
But this one has forged unlikely alliances. With Scott Morrison as the chief villain it was always going to get ugly but this time you not only have Labor siding with Hanson but even Murdoch’s misogynist male columnists joining the Holgate martyr brigade.
Let’s start with what sparked it all: Holgate’s disastrous last appearance before the Senate in October last year.
It was here, in the heat of pandemic austerity, sporting her own $40,000 Bulgari timepiece, that she revealed she had rewarded four senior executives with four Cartier watches worth $3000 each.
But for many seasoned political and business observers it was her next comments that really sealed her fate, when Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching asked her whether it was “appropriate to use taxpayers’ money to buy Cartier watches for already highly-remunerated Australia Post executives”?
“I have not used taxpayers’ money,” Holgate replied. “We are a commercial organisation. We do not receive government funding.”
Senator Kitching was forced to remind her that it was in fact a government organisation.
It was reportedly that last part of the exchange that was the final straw for Morrison, who had been watching in his office and rushed to the floor of Parliament where he delivered his tirade.
“I was appalled. It’s disgraceful and it’s not on,” he said, adding the chief executive had been instructed to stand aside and if she doesn’t wish to do that “she can go”.
And she did. Less than two weeks later she announced her resignation from the $1.4 million role and even told how she would not seek any “financial compensation” and admitted the “optics” of the Cartier watch purchase did not pass the “pub test” for many Australians.
The latest cause célèbre
But Holgate has powerful supporters and within four months she had become a cause célèbre for everyone from Pauline Hanson to the Licensed Post Offices association and even the emboldened female anti-bullying lobby.
Let’s just recall for a minute the story behind the Hanson-Holgate alliance. In July last year One Nation had posted 100 stubby holders to a North Melbourne public house tower just days after Senator Hanson had referred to the 3000 locked-down tower residents as “alcoholics” and “drug addicts”. They were accompanied with a handwritten note that read “no hard feelings”.
Government and health officials refused to distribute them for fear it would inflame an already dangerous situation within the building, but the AusPost CEO reportedly personally intervened and even threatened to get police involved if they were not delivered.
It emerged that Holgate was again wooing Hanson a few weeks later with a “red carpet” guided tour of post office facilities in an effort to win One Nation’s crucial vote over the timing of daily postal services.
Perhaps this should be recalled today by those who read the “WearWhite2Unite” ads comparing Holgate’s struggle with the suffragettes of last century.
Even more bizarre is the website that has a picture of Holgate in white above the headline “Stamp out workplace bullying”. Some might think an entitled corporate executive should hardly be equated with the genuine victims of serious workplace bullying and harassment.
Chauffeur-driven cars and beauty sessions
Let’s not even get into the official report into Holgate’s time at AusPost, with the hundreds of thousands of dollars of (yes) taxpayers’ money spent on everything from chauffeur-driven cars to hair and beauty sessions for her myriad media appearances.
And then there was the $34,000 for the Sydney-based Holgate to stay at the five-star Grand Hyatt hotel during her regular visits to Melbourne. Let’s look at her own words in a gushing interview with the AFR’s Boss magazine in October 2018 about her “home away from home”.
“It’s fantastic. I got home at 9.30 last night and I wanted something to eat and they made me a cheese toastie,” she said.
“I want my laundry done. I call them in the morning and say ‘could you do my laundry today?’.”
Gosh. A five-star hotel doing all that. Incredible, really, from a woman who lives in a $5 million home and was credited with the international success of Blackmores in her previous CEO role.
Perhaps those making her a martyr today should put it all in perspective.
Just because Scott Morrison threw a female under the bus while protecting even more controversial and incompetent males in his own ranks does not mean she should be portrayed as a victim.
It simply means the blokes should have gone first.
Is Christine Holgate a worthy martyr, or do activists need to find another figurehead? Let us know your thoughts by writing to [email protected]. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
Inoculate yourself against the spin
Get Crikey for just $1 a week and support our journalists’ important work of uncovering the hypocrisies that infest our corridors of power.
If you haven’t joined us yet, subscribe today to get your first 12 weeks for $12 and get the journalism you need to navigate the spin.
Peter Fray
Editor-in-chief of Crikey
Leave a comment
This is all a bit too clever by half.
Perrett plays along with Kitching’s bait and switch, asking was it “appropriate to use taxpayers’ money” and with the response ““I have not used taxpayers’ money”, which is correct, Kitching is then, apparently, “forced to remind her that it was in fact a government organisation”
On delivering addressed mail Holgate had a statutory duty to deliver mail, a point overlooked by Perrett’s criticism on the non-delivery of Hanson’s stubby holders.
Then, apparently “it emerged” … “again”(!) that Holgate wanted to persuade Hanson to support changes to the timing of daily postal services.
It’s entirely reasonable as CEO to try and persuade Hanson to vote for those changes.
The rest is not much more than a snark.
Piss weak.
“She was only trying to help Hanson monster a building full of pissed off people, so she could enact a massive program of vandalism against the public company she was running.”
A less compelling defence than some might think.
It’s outrageous that Perrett use so loaded (and utterly untrue) a phrase as “…Hanson-Holgate alliance.” – it tends to influence weak minds, like xander above, who perhaps don’t read no good.
As for the shock-horror of the CEO needing to step into a moral panic swamp to point out that Australia Post has a legal obligation to deliver mail.
This author, from her CV, must know what happens with certain bedfellows….itch…scratch…
Of course, what Kitching should have asked was why it is appropriate to
use taxpayers’ money tobuy Cartier watches for already highly-remunerated Australia Post executives who, it has been reported, were merely negotiating a renewal of an existing contract which was presumably beneficial to both parties… in other words, for doing nothing more special than their actual jobs.Meanwhile, we plebs never get bonuses or any sort of payment for massive amounts of unpaid overtime.
The can of worms is how many Public Service Employees receive bonuses. I agree, one is just doing their job. Are bonuses designed to buy loyalty to the individual issuing them etc. or just giving a bit of graft to a mate?
Non-executive public servant cant get bonuses like this. In Victoria non-exec VPS staff are in line for annual performance increments up to $7k (https://cpsuvic.org/vps-wage-rate/) each annual performance cycle. The system is set up to ensure most people get a bonus each year. .
Those execs were on what $200k salaries? They got a $3k watch. Poor optics, (especially given the upper class association with the Cartier brand), but it was ~1.5% of their salary. Who gives a crap? If they got these bonus a few times a year yes that would be a bit off….. but if their employment contract allows for bonuses, whats the big deal?
Or put to put it in more context, if we want Auspost to perform like a private corp, then they need execs that are hired like private sector execs. As long as they are held to the same expectations as private sector execs and fired just as quickly when they screw up, I couldn’t care less.
A fair question that I’d like to see addressed, but one that belongs to a different inquiry. Whether it’s right or not, it is legal and customary to give such bonuses. These bonuses, by current standards, were modest. So why was Holgate held to a standard not required of any other CEO? Why did Morrison blow a gasket about a few thousand dollars handed out quite legally, when serial rorting of hundreds of millions of dollars by other folk does not bother him at all?
The article is right to point out that there are plenty of reasons not to see Holgate as a martyr or any sort of hero, but there is still good reason to wonder why, out of all the many high-profile candidates for being sacked and disgraced who currently infest public office, it had to be one of the most minor offenders that got the chop.
After today’s evidence, further explained on tonight’s 7.30 program, we know the answer. She was opposed to the government’s secret plans to privatise the joint.
That makes perfect sense – how dare she show any concern for the public interest. No wonder she had to go.
The obvious reason SmoKo went nutz was to bury the $30M Leppington triangle rort but a dozen other issues could have been weaponised for that purpose.
News that the Minister had called Di Bartolomeo to ensure her defenstration before Q/T points to a backstory such as you suggest.
The four executives spent a lot of their weekends ensuring that the local PO can do your banking for you, thus increasing the profitability of Australia Post ($220,000,000) at a time when the board needed it to be shrinking, so that the profitable parcels section could be wrapped up and sold off to mates.
The CEO needed to be got rid of because she may interfere with a planned strategic attack on the publicly run Post Offices with large redundancies and increasing unemployment.
The cunning leak and the scheming ministers almost got away with it.
The payback from Christine Holgate was damaging and the PM now looks like a sexist bully and a thug.
She has made herself available if the senate needs any other information and nothing she says will be at all flattering.
Wrong they were renegotiating the Commonwealth one and were working on bring the other big 3 banks plus other financial institutions on board. There many towns around Australia where the only place to do banking etc is the Post Office.
The people who got the watches had their normal roles to do and were spending huge hours at night and weekends to achieve the goal of the banks signing up.
Think I’ll save my sympathy for the poor.
Supremely entitled corporate types need not apply.
Not so piss weak after all.
It would be nice if crikey or any media outlook read through the Communication Workers Union submission and took the time to comment on the substance of the actual issues at post.
It seems like journalists are more than happy to ignore the misery that has been dealt out to thousands of posties who were lionized as essential workers last year, for this squalid corporate soap opera.
Good post.
Nah, that would require effort.
Cast an eye over the remarks made by (the late) Patrick White, contained in his autobiography, as to the country being led by the nose.
‘ Less than two weeks later she announced her resignation from the $1.4 million role and even told how she would not seek any “financial compensation”….’
Incorrect. Holgate did not resign at any point – still hasn’t. She could not have been more clear on that point during today’s hearing.The author seems to have neither read Holgate’s submission nor listened today.
No, this piece could have been written during an idle lockdown hour – apart from the odd quote from ABC NewsRadio this morning.
If she resigned from her job it would require something to formalise it. You cant just stop paying someone salary based on a hall way conversation or not showing up. Letter, emails or at the very least phone calls with notes made and put on file.
So it should be pretty easy to determine if she resigned or didnt.
Oh dear, the CEO of a major corporation stayed at a 5star hotel and had her laundry done?
On what planet is Ms Perrett living?
But it is government owned, taxpayers money.Whereas a private corp.does not receive gov money.Why am I explaining the obvious?
Methinks you don’t even know the ‘obvious’.
I suggest starting your list of ‘Subsidised Private Corporations’ with ‘Private Health Insurance Companies’.
She should have stayed ar the YWCA and washed her smalls in the sink.
Australia Post does not receive money from the Government. It’s a Government Business Enterprise and the Australian people are its shareholders. It is run on commercial lines and bonuses/awards/rewards are paid in accordance with agreed policy. Ms Holgate did not breach these procedures. If the current Chairman disagrees with Company Policies he is welcome to negotiate change. However, he shouldn’t be holding someone to account just because he disagrees with current policy.
Did he hold her to account? It says he wanted her to step aside for 4 weeks for an investigation (which yes seemed to be a reaction to intense media/political pressure). All comes down to whether she resigned prematurely.
A resignation whilst under treatment for a mental health problem caused by unfounded accusations thunderously delivered from the floor of parliament and the subsquent public humiliation is not considered to be valid resignation.
From what I saw today was a bunch of well dressed thugs covering each others bums.
Now would be the time for some heartfelt apologies and a negotiated settlement.
I dont disagree.
She made a $20k decision that maybe ‘didnt pass the pub test’. Maybe not.
I think there is enough public support to at least pay her out the forgone $700k. If she keeps it all professional then she will walk into another high level job, head held high, with the executive world knowing she was unfairly treated.
The worst thing she could do for her OWN interests is let the MeToo movement get in her ear and hijack her issue for their cause.
Unlikely that she’d have much time for them.
We already have! 🙂 ROTFL
Pretty sure apologies will not be forthcoming in this sorry saga, although they should be, it would weaken the LNP’s proud stance on rorting…….
That would a minimum but Hokgate should also sue SmoKo privately.
If only for being SmoKo.
Apologies, ma’am, …Ms HOLGATE.
Really ?? How much do mining companies get just in fuel rebates, as a thank you for their generous donations to the liberal party and, one can be sure, selected MPs as well.
yes but they spend their shareholders money –
same syndrome just different scenario,
They do not just spend their shareholders’ money, they spend their profits, which are paid by the consumers of their products, which is the public.
Holgate pays for her own interstate accommodation and not her employer – she can stay where she likes as far as I’m concerned.
A point missed by the author is the Holgate stated to day in evidence, that she paid her own hotel bills.
And actually paid for her own accommodation, too.
The sheer extravagance of it!