Community Service Obligations

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Australia Post's Community Service Obligations (CSOs) are set out in Section 27 of the Australian Postal Corporation Act which requires that:

the corporation provides a letter service for both domestic and international letter traffic;
the service be available at a single uniform rate within Australia for standard letters;
the service be reasonably accessible to all Australians wherever they reside; and
the performance standards for the service reasonably meet the social, industrial and commercial needs of the community.

Performance Standards

Section 28C of the Act details the particular CSO standards Australia Post is required to meet. These are detailed below.

Lodgement	Maintain at least 10,000 street posting boxes
Delivery Timetables
Same State	Metro - next business day Metro to country - second business day Between Country areas - second business day
Interstate	Metro to metro - second business day Between metro and country - third business day Between country areas - fourth business day
On-time Delivery	Deliver at least 94% of standard (non bulk) letters according to the above timetable.
Access	Maintain mail lodgement points at its 4,000 retail outlets (2,500 in rural and remote areas) Retail outlets located so that:
	-	in metropolitan areas at least 90% of residences are within 2.5 km of an outlet
	-	in non-metropolitan areas at least 85% of residences are within 7.5 km of an outlet
Delivery Frequency	98% of delivery points to receive deliveries five days a week 99.7% of delivery points to receive deliveries no less than twice a week

Performance against these standards is independently audited and detailed in our Annual Report.

Community Service Obligation Costs

We are required by law to provide a universal letter service which is accessible to all Australians and, in addition, to provide a standard letter service at a uniform price (currently 50 cents) from anywhere to anywhere in the country.

This means our cost of delivering some letters can be many times higher than the postage charged. The cost of meeting our CSOs, currently estimated to be around $88 million each year, is funded by earnings from the reserved services (letters up to 250 grams) within Australia Post's letters business.

We do not receive any taxpayer money from the Government to meet the costs of CSOs.