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.

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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).

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.

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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#

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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.

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.