Marie Fitzpatrick: Rural Women CEO on the NZ Post potentially reducing their delivery services

There's hopes rural communities will be considered before changes are made to NZ Post's services.  

Options include dropping to delivering two days a week in urban areas, instead of three, and going from five times a week in rural areas down to three. 

Additionally, postal outlets will be reduced from 880 to 500. 

Rural Women CEO Marie Fitzpatrick says postal services are essential for rural communities that don't always have access to broadband. 

She said that while this consultation focuses on mail specifically and excludes courier posts, those services are done in the same van if you live rurally.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
As rare as students in class, potentially mail boxes and
post offices. The Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment is
proposing New Zealand post mail deliveries be cut to twice
a week. This is in towns and cities, rural areas
from five times weekly down to three, and reducing the
minimum number of postal shops from eight hundred and eighty

(00:20):
to five hundred. It says people are sending eight hundred
and thirteen million fewer male items than they were twenty
years ago. Maury Fitzpatrick is with Rural Women New Zealand.
She's the chief executive. She's with us Live this morning.
Good morning, Good morning Roan Marie. Nice to have you
on the show. You're obviously not on board with this.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
That's a fair assessment. We're pretty still at the depth
of these cuts and it's really disappointing that New Zealand
posts abandoning its quality of service and putting commercial violulity
ahead at the needs of rural New Zealanders.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
What is so crucial for rural kiwis that you need
five times a week instead of three.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well, if it starters, there's an assumption that we do
everything online and for you and I who live in
a city, that's probably true. But in rural communities not
everybody has access to reliable, steady internet, or that internet
can be extortionately expensive if you have to result the
satellite or other things like that. So for some more
vulnerable rural communities, that really really has a significant impact

(01:21):
dropping from five days to two. New Zealand Posts recently
dropped from six days to five in rural communities and
that has already had a profound impact on those communities.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
What impact has it had? What does it meant to people?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Well star, does people get more than just their post?
I think this consultation document focuses on male specifically and
excludes career parcels and things like that that New Zealand
Post delivers through its Career Post network. If you live rurally,
that happens in the same van, so it's not like
the Post is delivering my mail here in Wellington and

(01:57):
then I get my career packages every day regardless. Career
packages contain your insulin or important medication or important medication
for your animals if you're on a farm, for example,
having that cut to three days a week can be
really significant.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
But wouldn't you just order more earlier.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Probably if he was looking about five days to sit
six days to five, but you know five days down
to three, and you know there's a detail, and that's
not necessarily proposing to be alternative days. It could be
consecutive days and then nothing for a week.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah. Look, I have sympathy for you because and for
rural people because my family, some of my family lives
really and they chew my ear off about this. But
I just think if it's going to be that as
expensive as they say it is to maintain these services,
and it's kind of a no brainer, I don't know,
well it is.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
And this is a state owned enterprise the State Owned
Enterprises Act, So this proposal is consulting on the deed
of understanding. But the state owned Enterprises has a number
of principles. One is that they need to be commercially viable, correct,
But there are other parts of those principles which are
ensure that these day don't enterprises exhibit a sense of
social responsibility and have a regard to the interests of

(03:13):
the community in which it's creating. And we just want
the government to consider the needs of rural communities as
well as the commercial viability of this organization and we
think there's a way to balance that better than this
proposal does.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Marie, thank you very much for your call. I can
see we're getting lots of feedback on this funne already.
Marie Fitzpatrick, the Royal Women, Sorry Rural Women, New Zealand
Chief executive. For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge.
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