Who is wearing the blinkers

Flying in the face of public opinion was the order of the week for the 
Federal Government, as it placed two highly contentious issues at the top 
of its agenda. Though Mr Howard may be able to unilaterally declare war on 
Iraq, the sale of Telstra will not proceed unless he wins the Senate, and 
the public, over. With that in mind, Mr Howard set Peter "Cowboy" Costello 
loose on an unsuspecting rural population last week, with some rather 
amusing results.

"Better telecommunications services in rural Australia" is often quoted as 
being the last great barrier to the full privatisation of Telstra, and last 
week the Government believed it had that issue covered.

Apparently, earlier this year, Peter Costello was appointed the 
Government's "Ambassador for the Outback", (I kid you not).

So, when the Government relaunched its bid last week to sell the 51 per 
cent of Telstra still publicly owned, Mr Costello fortuitously happened to 
be in western Queensland. This enabled him to give us a first-hand low-down 
on life in the outback.

Mr Costello waxed lyrical on how the purpose of his tour was to get in 
touch with the bush: "to meet the local communities ... and also talk to 
people about the issues that are on their minds out here".

But try though Mr Costello did to fit in with the locals, the attire he 
wore throughout the tour — pale blue shirt, checked sports coat, pale 
slacks and riding boots — just screamed: "I shop in Toorak!"

And again demonstrating how au fait he was with the locale: "We met a 
drover along the way ... as he was stringing fourteen hundred head of 
cattle along ... I do not know if we were more surprised to see him or he 
was more surprised to see us".

(Really? You were surprised to see a drover in western Queensland?)

Later, when Mr Costello rode a horse for the obligatory TV news-grab, we 
were left wondering just who was wearing the blinkers — the horse or the 
Treasurer.

Mr Costello's rose-tinted assessment of conditions in rural Australia would 
stun most who live there: "I am going to take away a lot of memories of 
(the) many success stories, communities that are growing, developing new 
opportunities for themselves and for their citizens.

"What I have learnt is that there are a lot of communities here that really 
are taking hold of their own futures ... whether it be through tourism or 
niche manufacturing as you have seen with some of the Teddies or whether it 
be in the great industry of cattle.

"It is so dry at the moment, about me, but you are seeing a lot of those 
communities are embracing the future in a very positive way."

And yet to brighten their future even further, Mr Costello excitedly 
announced at one of his first stops that the Government has allocated a 
whopping $20 million for improving mobile phone services along country 
highways.

Mind you, Mr Costello's three-day grand tour of the outback took in just 
800 km of main-highway towns between Longreach and Roma — hardly a far-
flung corner of the continent, and perhaps not truly representative of 
outback life.

(To put this all in perspective: I grew up in Mount Isa, and we would often 
drive 800 km overnight to Townsville to do shopping and visit friends, and 
then drive home the next day. Had Mr Costello driven along that bit of 
highway he would have a very different picture of the "outback".

A short detour would have taken him to the town of Dajarra, population 300, 
which is currently more concerned with the fact they don't have drinking 
water than they are about not having mobile phone coverage along the 
highway).

What excited Mr Costello even more was the fact that he found towns with 
internet access along the way.

(This was only made possible by selling off 49 per cent of Telstra, Mr 
Costello explained to the townsfolk.)

And what will these net-savvy bushwackers do with this cutting edge 
technology?

Says Mr Costello: "Oh look, you go through a town like Morven and you see 
the Rural Transaction Centre and people that are able to access Centrelink 

Now that sounds like the rural Australia we all know — dole cheques, 
overdue mortgage payments and no local banks.

However, Mr Costello has warned rural Australia that although he went crazy 
with rural spending after "Telstra 2", they should not start writing wish-
lists for the next round.

When pressed on where the proceeds of the final sale of Telstra would go, 
Mr Costello remained tight-lipped: "I am not going to get into arguments 
about the proceeds of the Telstra sale ... I would like to apply the 
proceeds in an economically responsible way".

Yet for good measure, and committing to absolutely nothing, he still 
managed to slip in that those magic words: "better schools, and hospitals, 
and roads".

In his last Budget Mr Costello clearly demonstrated his policy on those 
points: better private schools and better private hospitals.

And as for those public roads: in his 2002/2003 Budget Mr Costello slashed 
$100 million from the Federal program that funds the maintenance of roads.

Don't panic just yet though, the Government has promised not to sell any 
more of Telstra until it has confirmed that telecommunications services in 
the bush have improved.

And they won't just take Cowboy Costello's word for it, either.

"Well, we will have an inquiry. And the inquiry will be a genuine inquiry 
to look at the state of services ... and we will await its report to see 
whether or not improvements are sufficient to satisfy the Government."

Just Monday this week the details of the upcoming Inquiry were announced.

How long will it last? Just two months.

And who will Chair the Inquiry? Dick Estens, agri-businessman and good 
friend of Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson.

Another of the Inquiry's three members will be former National Party 
backbencher, Ray Braithwaite.

"I think he can be trusted to do an independent report", says Cowboy, "And 
that is what we want".