A proposal for Australia Post to provide third party parcel delivery providers with open access to its letter last mile infrastructure has been met with mixed reviews from the north of the state.
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Team Global Express CEO Christine Holgate want to allow residents to collect or send parcels from other providers - such as Team Global Express - at their local post office.
The method is similar to that of Bank@Post, which provided rural residents with the option of simple transactional banking at their community post office.
Ms Holgate said the proposal would also provide a new revenue stream for rural mum and dad post offices, and "reduce greenhouse gas emissions" by eliminating the need for further travel for collection.
Similar open access arrangements for third-party providers have been rolled out internationally, in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Japan, France, and most recently in the United Kingdom, which had a previous monopoly with Royal Mail.
"When we did the research, there's an organisation called the National Retail Association, and they represent all the big retailers, and when we did the work with them, what came out of that work was a large number of those retailers deliver in metro areas but don't offer deliveries into regional areas," Ms Holgate said.
"We asked 'why' and they said 'deliveries are too slow and expensive'."
Ms Holgate said rural residents who miss the mail man are also being faced with long trips to their nearest post office to collect.
"If I took a parcel to you in Charters Towers and you weren't in... (delivery providers) would have to go to Townsville..and it's a couple hours' drive. A round trip is half a day out for some," Ms Holgate said.
"A lot of alternative delivery companies don't have operations in Townsville, so their failed delivery goes all the way back to Brisbane. It's a 14-hour delivery. No consumer is going to put up with that, and no business can afford to keep sending people out and risking a failed delivery.
"The cost becomes quite unacceptable. If we could work with post offices, it would give those post offices a new income stream.
"The owners of post offices are worried about services being reduced, they want to be able to work with all parcel providers...new revenue streams."
Ms Holgate, who previously served as CEO of Australia Post, launched the 'Everyone Matters' campaign in 2018 in support of regional postal workers and post offices, and invested $300 million to upgrade parcel processing systems using automation and tracking devices.
Ms Holgate presented her proposal to Australia Post in May 2022.
An Australia Post spokesperson said the company's "delivery network was open to third parties on commercial terms".
"Australia Post has an open network that delivers more than half a billion parcels each year, with over 70 million managed on behalf of other parcel providers," the spokesperson said.
"Australia Post gave careful consideration to the Team Global Express concept and determined it was not commercially viable or feasible.
"Australia Post has invested more than $1.2 billion over the past three years in new parcel facilities, technology and its delivery fleet to better service its customers."
Hughenden Freight and Industrial owner Aaron Zammit echoed Mr Nielsen's sentiments, stating the issue of rural residents' access to delivery was "already sorted" and there were "no service issues" in the region.
"The mums and dads that own Australia Post offices still have a good revenue stream," he said.
"There are mail runs...around all the regional towns heading out to Mt Isa. If you missed the mail...the mail man is back in two days...it's not that big of an issue.
"With us servicing freight through Toll Global Express...you can still access the services of any freight company by going through our business anyway.
"In pretty much every regional town, there's a regional freight depot and that's what we are. There are quite a few companies bidding for Australia Post...I can see why (Team Global Express) would want to pick up that revenue stream."
Mr Zammit said the infrastructure proposal had "no benefit" with the current freight systems working "really well".
