Hasbeen, I sincerely feel good about having some consensus in our opinions.

The race thing is a problem in our country, but I do concede the point your making and even go so far as to say that Telstra, is also happy about making it more difficult to understand their customer complaints resolution process. The level of service has most definitely decreased since oversea's call centres. Telstra's customers capacity, to achieve satisfaction has been greatly impeded. But Telstra's focus is for the benefit only, of it's shareholders and executives mostly overseas.

In the absence of laws that compel them to concentrate on the actual service they provide, and their obligations to Australian taxpayer for building our infrastructure in the first place and running it perfectly well without their commercial input for so long, Telstra simply doesn't have too be concerned about customer outcomes. It is a largely privately owned monopoly essential services provider. Take it or leave it if you can.

In their follow ups to resolve my complaint about billing and modifying contracts mid stream, they explained that their actions were allowed by the ACCC (a toothless organ without law to support itself), and I was re-assured that they hadn't been whacking their charges up as much as other essential services providers, citing electricity and gas providers as worse than them.

This is probably the same rationale they used with the ACCC !.

To understand this mentality, what they are saying is; "that the business environment in Australia today, means that they can do what they like", and therefore, I should feel some affection towards them, for not having whacked me as much as my electricity supplier or gas company.

I have more , but the point I am making is that Privatisation has not worked for this country, because weakening of laws protecting consumers, particularly in the area of the Trade Practices Act, and guarantees we would have taken for granted when our essential services/utilities were publicly owned, are now a distant memory.

It is not just Privatisation per se, but the way we have privatised our economy.