RICHARD PITTARD: I’d like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of a land on which we meet, the Wurundjeri and the Bunurong peoples, and pay my respects to their elders, past and present. Thank you for joining us today. I’m Richard Pittard, Chief Sustainability Officer at Australian Post. And on behalf of Australia Post, I’d like to welcome you to our Sunshine West Parcel Facility. We’re here today to announce an important investment in the future of Australia’s transport and delivery network. With the Australian Government supporting the next phase of Australia Post’s electric vehicle fleet expansion, we’re pleased to be joined by the Honourable Anika Wells, Minister for Communications and Minister for Sport, and Shane Plant, Executive General Manager of Network Operations at Australia Post.

It’s now my pleasure to invite Minister Wells to make some opening remarks.

MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS ANIKA WELLS: Thank you so much. Australia Post reaches every community in Australia, and for decades has been a part of our daily lives. Every day it connects people, it supports businesses, it delivers medicines and essentials items and provides services that Australia relies upon, wherever they live. As online commerce continues to grow, Australia Post’s role in keeping businesses productive and communities connected will only become more important. Recent fuel market disruptions have reminded us that resilient delivery networks matters. Australians not only expect essential goods and services to keep moving, they rely upon them as well.

That's why investing in Australia Post’s fleet is about strengthening a trusted national service that people depend on every day. 

Australia Post plays a vital role in the nationwide delivery of postal and parcel services. This trusted national institution delivers essential services to every community in Australia, including in our most remote areas. 

The Albanese Government is providing $40.5 million to accelerate the rollout of Australia Post's EV fleet network, and this will make a real difference. This funding will speed up the deployment of larger electric vehicles across Australia Post's network, as well as the charging infrastructure to support the electrified fleet.

It brings forward a pre-existing Australia Post program. It helps reduce reliance on diesel sooner while lowering emissions. Australia Post already operates one of the country's largest electric delivery fleets with more than 5100 EVs, travelling over 29 million kilometres every single year. This investment expands that transition to larger vehicles, including prime movers, strengthening the network right across the country.

Investing in Australia Post's fleet transition strengthens the postal network that millions of Australians depend on every day, and directly reduces our exposure to global fuel market shocks. This move will reduce the fleet's reliance on diesel, and Australia Post’s susceptibility to external shocks and cost increases that come along with that, as we’ve seen only too recently. It will provide a real-world blueprint for the broader freight sector, generating valuable data from operations of national scale and in Australian conditions. It will also support our long-term emissions reduction targets by using cleaner, greener vehicles. And given the huge and growing scale of Australia Post's parcel delivery service, now with more than 2.2 billion parcels delivered every single year, this is going to make a real difference.

Our investment helps Australia Post keep up with the growing demand of e-commerce in a cleaner, more cost-effective and less fuel reliant way. Ultimately, this investment is about ensuring Australians can continue to rely on a service that quietly keeps the country connected, productive and moving today and into the future. We are proud to be one of Australia's most trusted institutions, and more importantly the customers that rely on Australia Post.

And just quickly, can I say congratulations to someone very special back in my community of the north side of Brisbane? Jenitar Na’amoana gave birth to four identical baby girls in hospital last week. I know that she is at home right now recovering with her four other children, while the newborns will remain in hospital in Brisbane. I had just the two at once myself, having four at once is an astounding feat and we pay tribute to Jenitar for her strength and resilience in growing and bringing those babies to a position where they could be delivered safely in hospital in Brisbane.

Now, like anyone in this situation, Jenitar needs a helping hand. I think we can all understand that. And I know that Queenslanders and my office are rallying around her. She has started a GoFundMe page to try and get some support, and I know people are backing her in today. I have already written to the Queensland Housing Minister to try and secure some appropriate housing for this growing family. And I will have another go now that she has delivered safely, these are truly exceptional circumstances. I’ve also started a collection point in my office for Jenitar and her family if anybody wants to donate any supplies that they have. Thanks everybody in advance and congratulations to Jenitar and her beautiful growing family on your most extraordinary efforts.

With that, back to Aus Post. I'm going to hand it over to Shane.

SHANE PLANT: Thank you Minister, and thanks everyone for attending today. Today for us is a really significant day, it's very exciting. As the Minister outlined, we want to build a more sustainable fleet, we want to have a fleet that’s future-fit, we want to reduce our reliance on diesel for example. All of those things require investment and funding, and while we’ve had a plan towards 2050 for our fleet, this investment will help us accelerate. What we’ll be doing with that is looking at vehicles that are fit for purpose, so behind me you see some of the vehicles we have in our fleet. As the Minister outlined we’ve got over 5100. 

What we’ll be able to do now is look at different vehicle types in the heavier vehicle sector outside of our last mile. That’s going to enable us to place vehicles right throughout Australia in the right locations and test them. 

The other thing it will do is send a signal to the fleet manufacturers that Australia is serious about electrification. This is definitely going to push us forward much faster towards our 2050 targets. As I said it’s very exciting and we’re appreciative of the partnership and the confidence the government has placed in us to actually take our plan forward.

We can’t thank the Minister and the government enough for doing this because it all does come down to balancing the books.  What we're going to do with this fleet is give Australia a greener fleet over time, be more resilient, more reliable, and shaping the future. So thank you, Minister and thanks to Government. Thank you. 

JOURNALIST: How much would the 40 million- how many vehicles would that add up to, I suppose? 

PLANT: So, what we know with this funding, the vehicle mix will probably be in excess of 100. What that says in real terms is that will remove approximately one million litres of diesel consumption per year from our fleet. That's a lot of fuel, it's 2.3 per cent of our total fuel consumption. So when we say this will take us forward, it takes us forward towards a greener fleet and makes a an immediate impact on fuel resilience.

JOURNALIST: How much money would that save the company not having to pay for that much fuel? 

PLANT: To be honest, I haven’t done the math on that. It would be significant, we all know about bowser prices, so it will be in the millions of dollars. So the money we save there enables us to direct that to other investments … 

JOURNALIST: Do you have a charging station here? How are they all going to get charged? 

PLANT: We do have charging stations for our current fleet. The other thing that we will do as part of this funding over the next two years is actually put some infrastructure into some of our facilities. One of the things we do see with some of our electric vehicles is limited range. The more we put the charging infrastructure in place, the more flexibility we've got in terms of where we can use them. 

JOURNALIST: Do you have solar panels on this area?

PLANT: Yes, we do. Any of our new builds now are built with our 2050 sustainability goals in mind so we typically will have battery backup, solar, and the building and charging infrastructure. But there is a retrofit program to make our existing network more modern.

JOURNALIST: What sort of range does something like this EDV have? 

PLANT: So our electric delivery vehicle here that our posties use in the last mile has, about a 40-kilometre range. So if you think about your postie coming down the street to deliver letters and mail to you every day, that's sufficient. That battery in that vehicles lasts around seven hours. It's really interesting, if you think about what we do today, we are already making that difference. As the Minister outlined there’s 20 million kilometres a year in our business travelled by electrics. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, what did you make of Barnaby Joyce's interview on 7.30 last night when he yelled at his dog mid-interview to sit down.

WELLS: I missed it live because I was working, but extraordinary. I genuinely wanted to know why that instruction needed to be issued in the middle of the live ABC interview. Was the dog not tethered, why did it need to sit down? What was it doing that wasn’t sitting? I mean, there’s some genuine questions. But apart from that, no further comment. 

JOURNALIST: Just some questions from Nine. Flooding has been a big issue in your electorate and you campaigned partly on flood recovery. What do you make of your own Government's attempt to shift disaster funding responsibilities to state and local governments? 

WELLS: I am really supportive of Kristy McBain, our Natural Disaster Minister, bringing in a framework that allows the Federal Government to get money out more quickly and with less red tape than what local governments currently experience when there's a disaster. The Albanese Government, at every step of the way has been supportive, stepped in to help resource natural disasters when they occur, particularly in my state of Queensland – I’ve felt this on the ground. And the feedback we get is that we need to do that more quickly, we need less red tape for people – so that’s what this is designed to do.

JOURNALIST: Some local and state governments are saying that this will be detrimental to disaster recovery efforts. Would you advocate on behalf of your community against any of these changes?

WELLS: I’m supportive of communities getting this money more quickly, and this may not be held up in as much bureaucracy as these same people have complained of in the past. I think it's a good thing, we need to modernise natural disaster recovery so that it is fit for purpose and gets money where it’s needed most quickly. We will absolutely hold up our end of the bargain, with 50-50 funding with the states as we always do. Every single incident, the Albanese Government has supported communities when they have faced natural disasters.

JOURNALIST: So you think this will in turn help communities rather than hinder them if there is disaster? 

WELLS: That’s right. It's responding to feedback that the Minister has been receiving about red tape and bureaucracy and getting this money fast.

JOURNALIST: Just on the four babies that were born, what type of support- you mentioned asking the Housing Minister. How would that work? Can you explain what that would look like? 

WELLS: Yeah. So Jenitar and her family currently have four children and I won't reveal where they live, but they need a bigger house. They need more bedrooms. They've got four new babies coming home. That's eight babies all up. These are exceptional circumstances, and they're going to need the Queensland Housing Minister, who has the ability in exceptional circumstances to find a bigger house, to help them out. I know they also need a van … and I think it will be more than four baby seats, so it’s a huge thing, they will need a people mover and they don't have that, because they weren’t anticipating this would happen, so I think that’s a particular need as well. And anyone who's had children, and particularly multiples, let me tell you, the tins of formula and nappies you go through are eye watering. 

So, like I said, a GoFundMe has been started. I appreciate times are really tough and not everyone's in a position to help, but we do have a collection point at my office in Nundah, if anyone's in any position to support Jenitar and her family.

JOURNALIST: Would the Government provide any subsidised housing or is it more just helping find appropriate housing?

WELLS: That's right. We’re trying to find an appropriate house on the north side. I know one of Jenitar’s existing children already goes to school, so trying to stay in the local community. And Jenitar’s husband works locally, so trying to find something that's appropriate for the growing family. You would have seen the statistics for this to happen are extraordinary. This is an extraordinary case, and it deserves everybody rallying around and already this morning we’re seeing that.