So, is this the first cab of the rank in Phil Burgess's planned 'grass roots' campaign to pressure the Government into giving Telstra the right to operate as an unregulated private monoply (See http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200702/s1844497.htm)?

Of course, it is difficult and costly to set up a properly competitve telecommunications market in Austrlia. That is why our group, Citizens Against Selling Telstra, has long argued that a regulated privately owned Telstra is a second rate alternative to outright public ownership and control (http://www.citizensagainstsellingtelstra.com/ourcase.html#regulation).

Just remember, the privatisation of Telstra has been consistently opposed by the overwhelming majoirity of Australian citizens, the rightful owners of Telstra, who had paid for it many times over with their taxes and many substantial telephone bills throughout past decades. At the time the full privatisatation legislation was rushed through the Senate in September 2005, it was opposed by 70% of the Australian public and supported by only 17%.

A Queensland Liberal Senator, Brett Mason, actually said in the debate that 95% of the e-mails he had received were opposed to the sale. He nevertheless went ahead and voted for full privatisation anyway, having us believe that voting against the wishes of his constituents was somehow a test of true character.

Many politicians who supported full privatisation swore blue to their constituents that a privately-owned Telstra could be regulated to serve the public just as well as a publicly-owned.

Their silence on this issue, today, as Telstra attempts to bludgeon our political leadership into giving it the right to gouge monopoly profits from its customers as well as to export every possible Australian job to even lower-wage economies, is deafening.

I am not adverse to have the retail operations of Telstra as a private enterprise - its no different to any other telecommunications provider. But the wholesale infrastructure ownership really should be in public hands.Yes, I know government is not very good at running businesses, but its the only entity that can reasonably sustain loss-making operations in one part of its enterprise (eg provision of networks to rural and remote areas, or provision of infrastructure to proposed development areas). Overall, government should seek to run this at a breakeven point. Then all providers has access to a network at the same rate, for a cost that is reflective of the overall cost of providing infrastructure to this vast country.

Living in regional Australia where basic ADSL is a dream for many this Sydney centric view is irrelevant.

Ever tried to get Hybrid Fibre Coaxial? Sorry it ends 2 kilometres away, cough up $10,000.

Barnaby hang your head in shame.

Too late - it's gone - so this discussion is purely academic.

As a citizen and taxpayer I was totally against any sale of Telstra.

Now, as a shareholder, I don't see why I should continue to subsidise loss-making activities in rural areas that don't make me any money or why I need to pay for additional infrastructure to give to my competitors.

Since the introduction of "competition" the solution has been for the Government to subsidise these costs.

However, as a taxpayer, why should I then have to subsidise this phoney competition as well as paying for loss-making rural ventures? Wasn't the point of selling Telstra meant to provide true competition and to increase efficiency?

If people in the country aren't prepared to pay extra for their services (real costs) then they shouldn't have voted for the sale in the first place.

Maybe an influx of tax dollars will bring (parts of) the bush into 2007 technology but that's where it's going to stay for a very, very long time.

In a few years the company will be swallowed up by overseas interests and they will have lawyers sitting ten-deep on benches looking for ways to get out of any loss-making obligations.

Firstly, my apologies to Ilya Zak.

On a more careful re-reading the article, I now realise that my accusation that you were part of the planned campaign by Telstra to have the regulations wound back was untrue.

Nevertheless, the alternative completive structure you argue for, effectively arbitrage, in which 'competing' middlemen on-sell to the public, services bought from the monopoly provider at wholesale prices, remains a second rate alternative to what we could have had, that is a publicly owned benevolent telecommunications monopoly. Its economy of scale would have left any alternative competitive structure, including yours, for dead.

Country Gal, I don't accept that private enterprise is necessarily less efficient than government ownership. If we look at the staggering waste in resources due to failures of private companies in Australia and the rest of the world in recent years - One-Tel, Ansett, Compass Airlines (twice) HRH, etc, etc then I think the case is pretty flimsy.

If you think about it, privatisation actually adds an extra unnecessary layer of complexity to the provision of services. Instead of a service merely being merely required to serve the same public who would own it and to whom it would have been accountable, in the most cost-effective manner, a private service provider is required foremost to maximise 'profitability' for a much more limited group of shareholders. Often what would have been regarded as obviously 'profitable' in a much broader sense, had the 'shareholders' been all of the Australian public, is not deemed 'profitable' in the narrower 'bottom line' sense of the word. Obvious examples include:

1. Public telephones now being removed, including from train stations, and rural airports.

2. The world class apprentice training centres that were closed down by the corporatised Telstra in the early 1990's. Apprenticeship and cadetship training schemes of other corporatised publicly owned bodies were similarly closed around the same time. This has been one significant factor contributing to Australia's skills crisis.

(toBeContinued)

Wobbles, I think you will find that few in the rural ares would have voted for the sale of Telstra. Yeah, we voted in the party that decided to sell it off, but mainly because their policies on the whole were better than labor. This one wasnt, and country voters got sold out by their representatives. It will be an issue that simmers in the bush for some time, and I would suggest that the National Party incumbents be very wary at the next election.

The ideal situation that has bene argued by some posters here that the wholesale entity be held seperately is not a pipe-dream. Telstra can spin it off into a new entity, and it can either be run seperately, or the govt can buy it back (yes I am having a good laugh as I type).