When Maggie Thatcher announced her doctrine that there was no such thing as society, just millions of people selfishly doing their own thing and corporations ever expanding their profits, it would have been hard to imagine, like the shot heard around the world, her views ever being of relevance in the Yass River Valley. But she was listened to, first by the Hawke-Keating government and then by the Howard one, and the chickens are coming home to roost. Turns out that kind of thatcherite ideology, soon adopted everywhere, hurts everyone except the super rich, but hurts small rural communities the most. If Corporations are only required to make ever bigger profits (no society, remember); if all public services are privatised, turned into corporations; if all regulations are removed, or turned into “self-regulation”; if functions are outsourced overseas; if mergers are encouraged; then we will see happening what has been happening. The obvious place to make big profits – because of big markets, high volumes, short distances, available infrastructure, rich customers – is the city. The places where profits are low and costs are relatively high – those places where you would cut services in order to cut costs and raise profits – are small country towns and villages.

And so private companies cut services in country areas, as do newly-privatised once publicly-owned companies, as do publicly-owned companies next on some government’s list to be privatised, as do government entities starved of funds because of the endless thatcher-inspired reductions in tax revenues. Thatcher’s belief in there being no such thing as society was not so much a description as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the trend continues, and it seems likely to, then the public will own nothing at all. But that is the future. In the past and present we have seen banks closing branches in small country towns, railway stations and lines closed, Telstra reducing its presence and service in country areas, hospitals closing wards or all together, public schools closing, councils amalgamating.

And now it seems to be the turn of Australia Post. Well, has been for some time I think, as post offices began to look more like supermarkets than a government service, and as actual country post offices began to close and be replaced by the provision of post office facilities in general stores, matching what had long been the case in the smaller villages. And now in turn those facilities are beginning to close, apparently because the way that Australia Post pays for the provision of these services hasn’t kept pace with costs. Hasn’t kept pace with, makes no allowance for, increases in volume in some items, especially parcels. And all of this means, I am told, that the provision of this essential community service is being subsidised not by Australia Post (our public postal service) but by many of the small shopkeepers themselves. Who are, in many cases, already struggling to cope with competition from giant supermarket chains in regional centres. If the post office, such a central facility for every village, closes down, what is left of the community itself? Does it become just a place where people sleep at night, going elsewhere by car during the day to work, to school, to shop, seek medical treatment, to undertake postal and banking operations? Is that a community, and if it is then why would people want to move from towns to live in it? Once upon a time governments were anxious to encourage people to move from city to country – perhaps they still are, but the gradual loss of services will make this a forlorn hope.

I suspect that Australia Post may well be on a Gillard list for privatisation, and it is currently clearing the decks, improving the profitability, ready for that blessed event. If it isn’t it will certainly be high on the agenda of an Abbott government. Once it is privatised there is absolutely no doubt that the service provision will get even worse in the country as more cost cutting measures come in. All of this stuff keeps happening gradually (just as with climate change) and like the proverbial frog in gradually heating water we don’t notice until it is too late and we look around and say “whatever happened to this community?” If you have a post office in a local store have a chat to the store owner, see how he or she is going, ask whether you should protest and to whom. Like many such things, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone – get in first this time.

It’s a pity that the price of maintaining some fragment of services in country areas is eternal vigilance.

I blame Maggie – decisions of leaders whose eyes shine with the white hot heat of ideology, made in oak panelled rooms to the applause of corporate leaders, have a way of impacting on those communities and individuals who can least afford it half a world away.