Ms PLIBERSEK (10:38 PM) —I know that you are aware, Mr Speaker, that in isolated communities the postal service is vitally important. It is a lifeline to the outside world for many people who live in isolated areas. It may surprise you to know that, although my seat is a very urban one, part of my seat is Lord Howe Island. Lord Howe Island depends very much on the postal service for its connection with the mainland, even to provide services that we take for granted. It is impossible to get books unless they are ordered from the mainland, and art supplies and any number of specialist goods and services are only available through the post.

It pained me when I went to Lord Howe Island recently for Anzac Day and was there for a marvellous Anzac Day service to then go to the post office and be told of some of the problems that they are having with their postal service. They are extremely serious problems. Due to the weight restrictions on the aeroplane that usually brings the mail, most mail is brought by sea. Australia Post on the mainland sometimes advises people who are posting items to Lord Howe Island that it take three to four days. This is very seldom the case; it is more likely to take three to four weeks for an item to reach Lord Howe Island. This causes all sorts of problems for people who may be travelling to Lord Howe Island perhaps with special dietary requirements and are told by their local post office that they can post things three or four days before they leave. Most often items get there three or four weeks after the person has left to return home and the post office on the island is left to deal with some very angry customers of Australia Post, as well as the problems faced by the people who are actually there who do not get their items.

People who live on Lord Howe Island permanently are constantly dealing with this problem. I will give one example from last year. I will run through a week. 15/16 December: no letters for Lord Howe Island but did receive letters for Malaysia, Iran, South Africa and Iceland. Monday 17th: no letters for Lord Howe Island but an eight- kilogram bag of letters for Nauru. Tuesday 18th: one bundle of letters received, 12 of which were for Lord Howe Island and the other 300 grams for Belgium. Wednesday 19th: normal amount of letters for Lord Howe Island. That is one day out of the week. Thursday 20th: no small letters for Lord Howe Island. A4 letters, express post and small parcels received. One letter for Fiji. Friday 21st: the plane arrived but no mail. Weekend 22nd and 23rd: a nine-kilogram bag of letters for the Solomon Islands. Monday 24th: a seven-kilogram box of letters for the USA with a Lord Howe Island label on the outside of the box. That is just running you through one week, Mr Speaker, of the sorts of errors that people are faced with every week.

What is really of concern is that, if foreign letters are arriving by mistake on Lord Howe Island, it means that letters bound for Lord Howe Island are somehow being directed somewhere else. Residents of Lord Howe Island do not know where their missing mail is going but every resident will tell you that they have had a piece of mail go missing at some stage. Quite often mail arrives damaged after a four- to six-week journey on the boat.

There are solutions to this. The first solution that the Lord Howe Island post office proposed is that there should be proper advice that goes out to all post offices around Australia reminding Australia Post staff that Lord Howe Island is part of Australia and does not need to have an international sticker placed on it every time the mail is sorted. Another solution they have recommended is that mail not be sorted with international mail as it is currently. That would certainly go some of the way to alleviating some of problems that people are facing on Lord Howe Island. It is very important to address these problems immediately because we are dealing with people who every day of every week are experiencing the sorts of muck-ups that I have evidence of here. One letter that was bound for Indonesia, where there is also, by coincidence, a Lord Howe Island, has been to Lord Howe Island three times, Jakarta once and South Africa once. Another letter has been mis-sent to Great Britain and to Malaysia before arriving on Lord Howe Island. Another letter that was addressed to the Cocos Islands ended up on Lord Howe Island. Another letter addressed in pictographic writing to the People's Republic of China ended up on Lord Howe Island. Another one to the Solomon Islands again was sent by mistake to Lord Howe Island. The list goes on and on, Mr Speaker, and this matter must be addressed. (Time expired)