Conroy: We won't be held to ransom on NBN

Stephen Withers
Monday, 15 December 2008 09:38

Opinion and Analysis

During a media conference later in the day, he pointed out that "The expert panel received detailed legal advice before making its decision."

Some commentators had been tipping that the government in general and Conroy in particular would allow Telstra's proposal to proceed, even though it was already known that the company had not made a full submission.

This could be one of the reasons why Conroy said "The Rudd Government stands ready to take the tough decisions necessary to ensure that the telecommunications sector delivers what the nation needs for its long term economic prosperity."

He later added "The Government will not allow Labor’s Nation Building agenda to be held to ransom by any corporation."

One possible interpretation of Telstra's actions is that the company realised it was on a hiding to nothing (ie, it is happy with the status quo and that even if it won the right to build the NBN there is no guarantee its profitability would be improved), so its actions were calculated as a spoiler.

It now has an opportunity to drag out the NBN process even further by taking the interpretation of the RFP to court. If a sufficiently long delay could be engineered, it would be hard for the Commonwealth Government to avoid restarting the process to allow for commercial or technical changes since the original closing date.

Another possibility is that whoever was looking after the process at Telstra simply didn't read the details carefully enough.

There's a saying attributed to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's chief press secretary and former journalist Bernard Ingham: "cock-up before conspiracy."

Maybe that's what Conroy was hinting at when he said "Telstra had more than enough time and resources to fully understand what was required of proponents in this process."