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The Forum > Article Comments > Competing communications > Comments

Competing communications : Comments

By Ilya Zak, published 13/2/2007

Selling off Telstra in one piece just means that the anti-competitive behaviour will continue.

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Country Gal,
Actually I was playing Devil's Advocate and I agree with you completely.

Nobody outside federal cabinet seriously campaigned for the sale. Efficiency is a production of management - not ownership and the argument that Public ownership of vital national infrastructure is bad makes no sense. Using their logic, why not privatise the Army and hire mercenaries as required?

A misleading comment made during the Alston era was to the effect that that "only Australia and Botswana had completely publicly owned Telcos". What he didn't say was that most countries have retained partially owned Telcos and now we are still in the minority but at the other end of the scale.

Just as Optus was originally granted it's licence on the basis that it was "majority Australian Owned", this soon changed to "majority Australian Company owned" and it is now owned by a foreign government. What chance for Telstra?

I'm afraid that it will only be a few years until we see what our politicians have truly wrought for our national communications.

A reasonable trade-off would have been to retain the core network in public hands and sell off only the retail components but now it's too late.

The new management of the company is probably taking the correct commercial approach but it will have a significant social cost.

I have worked in that industry for over 30 years and have seen the deterioration and decline of rural infrastructure first-hand and could tell some truly scary stories.
Posted by wobbles, Wednesday, 14 February 2007 2:57:33 PM
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(continuedFromAbove)

Wobbles wrote: "Too late - it's gone - so this discussion is purely academic."

No, to the contrary, I think you will find that the discussion is far from academic. The Australian community is paying, and will continue to pay, a terrible price for the corporatisation and privatisation of Telstra, and you may find that many may not let this Government get off, as lightly as they are hoping, for what they have done.

It was opposed, at every point, by an overwhelming majority of the Australian public: According to Newspoll figures 66% opposed privatisation in 2002 and 70% opposed privatisation in 2005. Other polls and surveys show even higher opposition. Let's not forget, as I mentioned, that even Senator Brett Mason told the Senate in September 2005 that 95% of the e-mails he received opposed the sale.

If the rightful owners of an asset who paid for it many times over through taxes and very substantial telephone bills, tell their politicians that they don't want that asset sold, and it is sold anyway, how does that differ from theft?

If democracy is to be at all meaningful, then those politicians who rammed privatisation down our throats against all the facts, logic and reason must be held to account for what they have done.

Wobbles, don't kid yourself that "the new management of the company is probably taking the correct commercial approach". If Trujillo's record at the American telco US West up until 2000 is anything to go by, he will be looking after himself and his mates first and ordinary shareholders will be lucky if they get any worthwhile crumbs out of it (that is, after the initial bribe paid just now to them at everyone else's expense).

Some chilling and sobering reading is to be found at in the September 2006 archives of SBS's Dateline program. Read the transcripts of the story "Trujillo on the line" and the interview with Phil Burgess at

http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=archive&artmon=09&fyear=2006#

(tobeContinued)
Posted by daggett, Friday, 16 February 2007 11:27:06 AM
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(continuedFromAbove)

Note how Trujillo secretly negotiated a US$72million (AU$95million) pay-out from QWest who was buying out US West, just before cancelling US$270 million in dividend payments to US West shareholders in June 2000. This secret deal was only learned of by the shareholders years later in 2006 after a lawyer hired by them had spent years pursuing the paper trail.

Look at how the technology company Graviton was nearly ruined whilst Trujillo was its CEO.

Since Trujillo got the job of CEO of Telstra, he spent a staggering AU$28million to hire 'experts' from the US, Singapore and Europe to write his much-ballyhooed strategic report. (Many of these 'experts' were literally dragged off the streets by the foreign company which was awarded the contract.) Remember that it was for the delivery of this report written by others at the cost of tens of millions of dollars that he was paid his bonus.

He has also awarded, without any open tendering process, the exclusive contract to supply the necessary handsets for Telstra's NextG network to BrightStar a company run by one of his business associates.

Whatever crumbs are left over for Telstra shareholders after the likes of Trujillo have milked it to the utmost, will be paid for at the expense of Australian jobs, ever poorer service and monopoly charges to its customers.
Posted by daggett, Friday, 16 February 2007 11:28:37 AM
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I would prefer to go without a phone service rather than deal with this bunch of criminals. I did have their faulty service and after many complaints on the $450 overcharge on internet connection drop outs I refused to pay. After twelve months of lies from them and a complaint to the pretend commonwealth authorities they disconnected my phone and paid the money they owed to me to the Qld Public Trustee where it remains today as these criminals also refuse to return it.
We can be very proud of what we have allowed to evolve in this country. Keep voting for Howard and President Beattie and they will get worse.
Posted by Young Dan, Saturday, 17 February 2007 12:47:09 AM
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