Small businesses running Licensed Post Offices are bracing for the end of Australia Post's daily letter deliveries, but have taken comfort in the extraordinary strength of their parcel handling services.
After posting a razor-thin profit of $23.6 million in the last six months of 2022, it anticipates a loss for the full 2022-23 financial year — only the second time since being corporatised in 1989.
Australia Post has long been caught between its role as a publicly owned corporation expected to compete with private corporations and as a community service provider delivering letters, a business in terminal decline.