Sydney: More than 400 residents crowded the four corners surrounding the Glebe Post Office on January 20 to demand that Australia Post abandon its plan to close the facility.

Rally chair Robyn Kemmis from the Post Office in Glebe Action Group (POGA) said the big turnout underlined the area’s “dismay and anger” at Australia Post’s decision. Four thousand five hundred people had signed a petition calling for the post office to stay open.

Balmain state Labor MP Verity Firth, federal Sydney Labor MP Tanya Plibersek, Labor Sydney city councillor Meredith Bergman and Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore all addressed the gathering.

But it was left to Glebe historian Max Solling, addressing the crowd after the official speakers had finished, to give the real background to the closure – Labor’s disastrous embrace of neoliberal policies. Solling revealed that the post office building itself had been sold by the Keating ALP government way back in 1990.

Labor politicians turning out to protest the results of their party’s policies is a bit rich. Their party has been selling off public assets for decades, and is now embroiled in giving away NSW electricity for a pittance.

Liberal politicians are equally hypocritical, of course, protesting at post office closures in their electorates and trying to make political points about NSW Labor’s electricity privatisation when they equally support privatisation of public services.