Australia Post is part of the fabric of Australian life – in both familiar and surprising ways. Through our people, products, services and community involvement, we are contributing to everyday life and business success throughout the nation. We are part of Australia's history and its future. We are part of every day.

Australia Post is a self-funding business that uses its assets and resources to earn profits, which can be reinvested in the business or returned as dividends to the Commonwealth Government. Our three core business areas are letters; retail and agency services; and parcels and logistics.

We have 34,842 full-time and part-time staff, we operate 4,462 post offices, we deliver mail to more than 10 million Australian addresses and we serve more than a million customers in our retail outlets every business day.

We are committed to our community service obligations of providing an accessible, affordable and reliable letters service for all Australians, wherever they live. Now we are also serving the needs of Australian businesses in the Asia–Pacific region through our supply chain management and logistics services.

Australia Post’s origins date back to 1809, when former convict Isaac Nichols was appointed postmaster to the colony of New South Wales.

A regular Sydney–Melbourne mail service began in 1838 and by 1849 standardised postal rates were established by agreement between the colonies.

The colonial mail systems were merged in 1901 to become the Postmaster General’s Department (PMG), which was responsible for telegraph, telephone and mail operations. Then, in 1975, the PMG became the Australian Postal Commission (trading as Australia Post) and the Australian Telecommunications Commission (trading as Telecom Australia, now Telstra).

In 1989, the Australian Postal Commission became the Australian Postal Corporation, a government business enterprise, under the Australian Postal Corporation Act 1989, with the Commonwealth Government as its sole shareholder. Since that time, we have been operating under a commercial charter with a board of directors.

In a continual process that began in the early 1990s, we have transformed our customer service culture and introduced a series of major change programs that have resulted in a revamped retail network and state-of-the-art mechanised mail processing.

Australia Post conducts its business with integrity, honesty and fairness and in compliance with all relevant laws, regulations, codes and corporate standards. All employees and contractors personally commit to the highest ethical standards of behaviour in their dealings with customers, with the corporation and with each other. Our leaders encourage a culture in which ethical conduct is exemplified, valued and recognised at all levels.

Our corporate values provide the foundation for our Code of Ethics and guide the thinking, decisions and actions of our people.

Our values are:

• being committed to customers
• recognising and developing the capability of our people
• sharing business understanding
• ensuring participation and involvement
• creating and maintaining a safe and healthy work environment
• being open and fair
• setting high standards
• being accountable
• acknowledging achievement
• encouraging flexibility and adaptiveness.

Our key ongoing business strategy is to defend and extend our three core business areas (letters, retail and agency services, and parcels and logistics). This strategy allows us to capitalise on our existing strengths and to establish leadership positions in substitute markets or activities with growth potential.

To support that overarching strategy, we are pursuing the following long-term plans.

	Positioning cost-effective, paper-based products and services as a vital part of contemporary communications by: engaging with business customers to meet their current and future needs, especially through the use of technology to stimulate the growth of mail marketing improving the letters network and minimising costs communicating the benefits of paper-based communications to our customers.
	Using our retail products and agency services to support outlet viability by strengthening our position as a destination for agency services and for philatelic and packaging products by: reinforcing our leading role in providing access to a range of financial and other services rationalising and focussing our range of products and reducing supply chain costs implementing a national marketing strategy to promote our retail offer.
	Being the essential partner for domestic parcels and logistics services and a facilitator for Australian businesses that manufacture and trade in the Asia–Pacific by: bringing together a suite of highly recognised, reliable and competitively priced products extending partnerships with customers and suppliers to meet the emerging demand for global parcels and logistics services continuing to reduce network costs while maintaining service standards.

Australia Post recognises that everything it does has social, environmental and economic impacts – locally and globally. We also recognise that our long-term commercial success – our own sustainability – depends on having a healthy and vibrant environment and society in which to operate.

Our relationship with customers, suppliers and business partners is founded on sustainability principles.

We are committed to building a sustainable future by adopting and promoting the principles of sustainable development. This means integrating social, environmental and economic considerations into our decision-making processes and seeking continuous improvement in everything we do. We will adhere to the highest levels of corporate governance and openly report on our sustainability performance.