Telstra: Government seeks to trade principles

by Peter Mac

The Howard Government is stepping up its efforts to get a Senate majority 
in support of the sale of the 51 per cent of Telstra that remains in public 
hands. It is trying to split and buy off Democrat, Greens and other 
Senators opposed to the sale.

This tactic served the Government well in the first two stages of Telstra's 
privatisation.

For example, the earlier sale of Telstra shares involved the establishment 
of the Federation Trust, which sought to counter the effects of massive 
land clearance.

However, the Trust's reforestation work was largely carried out by manual 
planting of trees, while the real environmental vandals, the huge 
agribusiness companies, continued to use massive mechanical equipment to 
strip bare vast areas of the Australian landscape.

As a result, there has been virtually no significant improvement in 
reforestation or rectification of our critical salinity problems.

Then there were the promises to rural and regional Australia regarding 
telecommunications services — by and large undelivered.

Despite clear evidence of this, Greens leader Bob Brown last week fell head 
first into the Liberals' trap when he publicly toyed with the idea of 
trading the sale of Telstra for a halt to land clearance.

Brown was very smartly forced into a humiliating backdown by members of his 
own party, who correctly saw the vital necessity of addressing both issues 
as a matter of high principle.

Others opposed to the sale of Telstra have also shown signs of succumbing 
to the government's blandishments.

The ALP. has adamantly declared its opposition to the further sale of 
Telstra, but this didn't stop its telecommunications spokesman Lindsay 
Tanner "floating" the idea of selling off the most profitable parts of 
Telstra's operations in order to buy back the core business of telephone 
services.

This proposal ostensibly has the attraction of returning part of Telstra to 
public hands. However, it conveniently overlooks the damage of breaking up 
Telstra and the need for a fully integrated, publicly owned comprehensive 
telecommunications service.

The proposal, which was greeted with great interest by Telstra's 
competitors, has disturbing overtones of the Liberals' attempts to 
effectively split Telstra up by imposing separate accounting for the 
organisation's retail and wholesale divisions.

Tanner's proposal was immediately subjected to fierce criticism by the 
Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union, whose Communications 
Division President Colin Cooper described it as a retrograde step.

He stated that the problems experienced by Telstra and those it served (for 
example the lack of adequate telecommunications services to rural areas) 
would not be solved by splitting up the organisation.

Mr Cooper noted that such a move "...will make (that problem) worse, by 
denying Telstra the incentives and the revenues it needs for network 
upgrades and putting it at a disadvantage to its competitors."

He added pointedly: "I don't hear any calls for Optus to be split up into 
two separate companies, or for it to be prevented from offering mobile and 
internet services. ... The CPEU has vigorously opposed structural 
separation ... for well over a decade. Quite simply, we think it's bad 
public policy."

Despite vigorous opposition from farmers and rank-and-file members of his 
own party, National Party MP Ron Boswell also publicly expressed interest 
in accepting the sale of Telstra in exchange for an improvement of 
telecommunications services to rural Australia.

Like Bob Brown, Boswell has for the moment been pulled into line by members 
of his party.

The National Party does not like the idea of at last achieving a reasonable 
level of services for the bush only to see Telstra flogged off to a profit-
mad private sector with no long-term social commitment or guarantee to 
maintain services.

As for promises of bans on land clearing, they will still have to be fought 
in the future. Only a new type of government truly representing people's 
interests can offer such a guarantee.

The Liberals are intent on selling off the remainder of Telstra prior to 
the next elections. The political wobblings of Brown, Tanner, Boswell and 
co. constitute an ominous sign that the Liberals' tactics are having an 
effect.

It only needs four anti-privatisation Senators to defect for the government 
to pass the legislation.

Tasmanian independent Senators Shayne Murphy and Brian Harradine have 
already expressed an interest in the enticements being offered by the 
Government.

A number of ALP Senators appear ambivalent, to say the least, and many of 
the National MPs owe their political allegiance to the big agribusinesses, 
not to their small farmer constituents.

None of them are adverse to accepting a few enticements for their 
electorates in return for going quietly on the sale of the remainder of 
public ownership of Telstra.

Strong action on the ground is required from the trade union movement and 
other left and progressive forces so that the Democrats, Labor and Greens 
hold tight and reject Telstra's complete privatisation.