services it ran a savings bank and was responsible for telephone services. The rapid increase in private telephones in people's homes, and the introduction of internal and international airmail services in the 1930s, contributed to its growth. The New Zealand Post and Telegraph Department was renamed the New Zealand Post Office in 1959. As well as traditional communication services, the Post Office provided community services including registering births, marriages, deaths and cars, accepting television and fishing licence fees, enrolling people to vote, and collecting pensions. Post Offices also provided daily weather and temperature checks for the Meteorological Office, and postmasters were able to perform marriage ceremonies. Throughout the 20th century, the Post Office was New Zealand's biggest employer. In the 1960s and 70s steps were taken towards better managing the ever-increasing volumes of national and international mail: the installation of New Zealand's first mechanical mail sorting machine in the Auckland parcel depot, and the introduction of address postal codes to simplify bulk mail sorting. However, increasingly the tension between political and commercial pressures meant the business was not operating efficiently. By the 1980s, the variety of roles, the sometimes-conflicting needs of three different businesses, and political considerations were major constraints on the Post Office. It was increasingly unable to meet growing consumer demands and the postal side alone was losing over $20 million a year, with expectations that this would balloon in the future. In 1985, Jonathan Hunt, Postmaster General, ordered a review of the organisational and management structure of the Post Office. The subsequent Mason-Morris report of 1986 called for sweeping changes, separating the three core businesses to operate as independent State-owned corporations. Abolition On 1 April 1987, the department was abolished under the Postal Services Act 1987, and three state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were formed, responsible to the Minister of State Owned Enterprises, initially from 14 August 1989 Stan Rodger. New Zealand Post Limited Telecom Corporation of New Zealand Limited Post Office Bank Limited Of these, due to privatisation, only New Zealand Post remains as an SOE. Telecom was sold to two United States Baby Bells, and PostBank was sold to the Pacific banking conglomerate Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ). The Postbank brand was phased out by the late-1990s. Telecom was floated on the New Zealand Stock Exchange in the early 1990s, per the conditions of its privatisation, and was rebranded in August 2014 as Spark. In