The Howard Government is infuriatingly 'political'. Policy follows electoral timetables and when they have chosen ideology over politics, it has been in the wrong areas, such as GST and Workchoices. It appeared in the news they have 'no plans' to sell Australia Post - well, they should take an ideological stance, and sell it.

With GST the federal government should have told the states to raise their own taxes, the bunch of no good beggars. Now the feds do 85% of all taxation in Australia.

And Workchoices, while enhancing individual bargaining, prohibits collective bargaining. The latter being a liberty which should not be prohibited legislatively for those that choose to negotiate that way. To add to the problem, both are anti-federalist legislation.

From the article:

Australia Post is not about to follow the long line of privatisations such as Telstra, Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the federal government says.

The Howard Government has not been good at privatisation anyway, Qantas has a government protected market on the Pacific routes, and Telstra remains a monopoly that is inhibiting broadband adoption in Australia. So even if Australia Post is sold, it will probably remain with some kind of government legislated or regulated market advantage through a botched policy implementation.

There is really no reason to keep Australia Post public. There are already private competitors to Australia Post such as Fedex and UPS. While capital intensive to set up a competing distribution infrastructure, it is not impossible.

One other thing; Netflix in the US is made super simple and convenient by the US Post Office picking up the mail from *your* letterbox. Maybe if Australia Post had direct private competition it would have to innovate in these areas and help other tangential services.