Functional separation could cost $1.2b: Telstra Chairman

Spending 1.2 billion dollars for a doubtful outcome is madness. Functional or structural sepearation has not caused acceleration of investments and innovations anywhere in the world. On the contrary, evidence is pointing to vertically integrated companies investing and innovating more. Unless governments are willing to fill the void, and keep forever burdening taxpayers, why would you do it? Let companies compete using their own resources, not by gaming politicians and regulators.

Telstra's critics need to understand this simple fact right at the outset, Australia has far less, than a total of 20 million possible national Telco customers, and 85 percent of those, are living in just a handful of towns and cities scattered around our nation's seaboard, yet, at the very same time, the remaining 15 percent who deserve equal right of access to modern Telecommunications services, are scattered all across our nation's total geographic area which equates to roughly the same size as the entire USA.

Of course, regardless of wherever they are located, Australians naturally all demand, their very own slice of absolutely First-World standard Telecommunications, but strangely, at the same time, not many of them seemingly ever wants to pay the real cost, of actually providing it.

Regardless of just how much they would all like for it to actually be so, there really are no Telco fairies to be found, living at the bottom of their gardens and the highly technical job of providing world class Telecommunications to the many close-by and indeed, far-flung corners of our country, does not just happen by some type of 'Harry Potter' magic.

The harsh reality is, that in a national Telco market of this very limited population number, but enormous geographic coverage size, with all of it's customers demanding their own share of first world class services, it absolutely, naturally demands a strong, national monopoly player, to service it all efficiently and effectively.

Over my 36 years spent working in Telstra's field and network, technical engineering workforce, I witnessed an absolute fundamental shift, in the Government inspired direction of the company, going from a starting point in the 1960's where it's workforce was proudly involved in the very fore-front effort of our nation's engineering building task, to finally watching a sad disillusionment set in at the end, at the sight of our company being treated as nothing more than a run down and hemorrhaging cash cow, only there to be milked of every possible dollar, by its rapacious political masters.

I would now entreat Senator Conroy to clearly understand that the only thing, that the continually vociferous foreign owned, cream-skimming, Telco 'parasites' who continue, to daily bludge upon the use of our mainly previously taxpayer funded, Telstra provided, national Telecommunications network infrastructure, instead of actually rushing out to spend any of their own money, on creating their 'own infrastructure', are at all solely interested in, is their own absolutely unfettered ability to ship as much of our Telecommunications customer's money, home to their very own, overseas based corporate head offices, just as fast as they can possibly achieve it, and with the least effective competition to that plan, as they can possibly arrange, through their ceaseless lobbying, of our politicians.

For me personally, it was very interesting to recently watch Senator Conroy initially offer Telstra a 'magnanimous' contribution of $4.3 Billion towards them building the NBN for him and it was indeed, a very telling exercise shortly there-afterwards, to witness just how very quickly that paltry amount suddenly became an upwardly revised figure of $43 Billion, after Telstra's Board declined his 'generous' offer of the job and told him, 'thanks but no thanks'.

With recently released projections of Australia's population rapidly increasing towards 36 million by 2050, now a mere 4 decades away (ever noticed how politicians and economists just love talking about continually increasing population figures ?) along with the now seeming increasingly rapid onset of global warming and the new impact of carbon ETS taxes and rising global Peak-Oil energy shortages and all of our large cities current existing public infrastructures and increasing volumes of road traffic and public transport systems already crumbling and verging almost daily upon total gridlocked collapse, make no mistake my friends, we are talking about a very, very, high stakes game here.

Unless Senator Conroy can get this high speed NBN rolled out and working and within a very tight future time frame, Australia's national productivity and national economy and international competitiveness, will be headed straight down the gurgler, on a one-way trip towards "South of the border, down Mexico's way".

Understanding this increasingly gloomy looming future scenario, makes it easier to comprehend the reasoning behind Senator Conroy's now increasingly desperate attempts, to entice Telstra into playing by his very own version, of the new national communications portfolio's 'revised' set of rules.

Now, unfortunately for Senator Conroy, one of his recent political predecessors saw fit to sell off our previously Commonwealth owned, and totally vertically integrated, national Telecommunications carrier, in return for a momentarily fleeting, 'Judas's hand-full' of 30 silver-shekels, that they (luckily) managed to con (notice how that word rhymes so nicely with Conroy and Con-Job) out of Australia's then somewhat more naive, little Mum and Dad investors by convincing some of them, to pay up all over again, for our previously communally owned Telco assets that we had all, up until then, already fully paid for via our collective taxes.

Undeterred by the fact that his parliamentary fore-runners had successfully killed off their own Telco goose that previously laid our national golden dividend eggs, Senator Conroy et-al are now back to their scheming best, on just how they can possibly go about stealing it all back again, from those same poor long suffering, Telstra shareholding Mums and Dads, by legislating to break apart the company's vertically integrated operating structure, without having to offer them even one dollar of any compensation at all, for doing so, by the delightfully simple means of now holding his freshly dreamed-up "No future 4G-Mobile Services Spectrum for you, Telstra, unless you're willing to toe our Government line and 'self-separate' your own existing operational business structures" loaded legislation gun, to Telstra's head.

Hello...!

Am I totally missing something here...?

I thought that we were supposed to be living in a free Western liberal Democracy, not some Stalinist command economy...!

I thought that the Telstra that we are talking about here, is now an Australian, publicly owned, and publicly listed company...?

Senator Conroy seems to be operating under the severe psychological delusion that Telstra is still, a forelock tugging, sycophant filled, Federal Government owned Business Unit, perpetually bound to do the Minister's bidding and waiting fawningly upon the dispensation of his own personal daily whims....!

Just what sort of 'Sovereign-Risk' message does he think this Government's current threatened legislative actions against Telstra, is right now, absolutely clearly sending to anyone out there in the entire world, who may be even remotely, even possibly, thinking of investing any, of their own hard-earned money in Australia...?

This totally unprecedented in Australia's history, blatant, crude, brute, thuggish, Government stand over tactic, of a publicly owned company, is surely, a directly photo-copied extract, of page one, lesson 101, lifted straight out of Robert Mugabe's very own handbook, "The Dictator's Guide to the Abysmal Non-Governance of a Banana-Republic".

Don Argus of BHP (an ex Telstra board member) said recently "If this is how the Government now wants to treat them, Telstra should be having a long hard look at just why they are bothering to be in this (NBN) game at all ?" This should also include them asking why they should bother at all, to provide any 'universal service obligation' support for regional Australia, when it seems patently clear that this highly unprofitable service requirement, has been 'universally imposed' solely, upon Telstra and not upon their foreign owned, cream-skimming competitors.

It certainly strikes me at least, with blinding clarity, that with 1.5 million Australians currently being very unhappy, direct Telstra share owners and with the vast majority of the remainder of us, indirectly holding Telstra shares through all of our own superannuation companies investments, it is either a very brave, or very stupid, or indeed very, very, very, desperate, Federal Government Communications Minister Conroy, who is seemingly absolutely hell-bent on his present unprecedented course of punitive legislative action.

Personally, I think that he would do well to reflect at least momentarily, upon the fact that the PMG / Telecom / Telstra company has been a leading part of our nation's engineering infrastructure for far longer, than he has personally drawn breath upon this Planet and it will undoubtedly, continue to be around far longer than after his own shiny backside has vacated the Ministerial leather.

This whole exercise of the provisioning roll-out of the NBN is far too important to the future prospects for continued national prosperity and the living standards of all Australians, to allow it to be mired down in an antagonistic and egotistic battle of wills between the Communications Minister and Telstra's management.

Instead of trying to destroy Telstra's operational strengths, he should instead, insist that a strictly enforced condition of all foreign owned Telcos licenced to operate in Australia requires that they also stump-up their own fair, market share based, level of contributions towards the total costs of actually meeting our nation's Telecommunications infrastructure requirements.

All Australians would be far better served by him, immediately engaging in honest, meaningful and positive negotiations with Telstra, to allow this exceedingly important national engineering infrastructure project to be rapidly progressed forwards.