"This has resulted in missed opportunities as customers are not accessing the full range of products and services, and their customer experience is poor," it reads. Communications Minister Paul Fletcher announced in November last year that a separate strategic review was to be conducted by Boston Consulting Group. Australia Post chief executive Christine Holgate during a Senate estimates hearing at Parliament House in Canberra. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen It is not clear what proposals contained in the 2018 review are still under consideration. An Australia Post spokeswoman declined to provide details but said "any assumptions made at that point in time would now be comprehensively outdated". However, the document shows the extreme financial pressure Australia Post has been facing.

Despite the losses forecast by PwC, Australia Post's own projections showed a forecast $109 million profit last year, growing to $161 million in 2021. Since the review, Australia Post has disclosed it made only $41 million in 2019. The review noted that Australia Post's letters business remained a "high risk", area with the amount of mail sent continuing to decline and with the top 10 customers "accounting for 24 per cent of letter volume and all to some extent attempting to migrate away from physical communication". Loading The most aggressive proposal contained in the strategy – marked "future options for change, not recommended at this time" – was increasing the delivery time for regular letters by three days. "This option would enable Australia Post to deliver regular letters to delivery points once a week only," the document reads. This could save $184 million per year, but would only be practical when the annual number of letters sent dropped to 1.2 billion. Just over 2 billion letters were sent last year, down 45 per cent since 2008. (The letters business is separate to Australia Post's parcel delivery business.)

"The customer impact from such a change would be dramatic. For Australians living in rural and remote areas, this change would mean a delivery standard of up to 10 days," the document says. But the review also proposed more immediate changes, including for Australia Post to push for alterations to the legislated rules about how it operates. One proposed change would be to allow street posting boxes not to be cleared on Sundays as they currently are, saving $7.4 million a year. It also urged changes to rules which force Australia Post to maintain at least 4000 retail outlets, with half of them — and no fewer than 2500 — in regional and remote areas. It currently has 4343 post offices. The review recommended Australia Post ask that the 50 per cent rule be removed "to avoid unintended consequences if Australia Post sought to expand its metro network access" and to "amend [the] description from retail outlet to access point" to remove "the possibility of consumer misperception re the definition of a retail outlet". "Downsizing the network may involve a transition over time to smaller-footprint locations, moving back-of-house delivery activity to centralised locations and replacing full-service locations to small-footprint automated kiosks with parcel lockers," the document reads, noting the network lost $130 million every year.