Telstra expects politicians to tell the truth

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 12 September 2007 04:48

Opinion and Analysis

- In a number of letters to the editor of regional newspapers the minister stated that "The Government is holding Telstra to this promise by imposing a licence condition to ensure that they do not turn off the CDMA network until we are satisfied".

-A number of the minister's colleagues, including the deputy prime minister and the leader of the National Party in the Senate made similar claims indicating that the decision to impose the licence condition had already been made.

The head of Telstra Country Wide, Geoff Booth, said: "By law the minister was required to consider the matter with an open mind and recent comments by her and her colleagues show that this was clearly not the case. She and her colleagues not only repeatedly made clear that the licence condition was being imposed before Telstra had made its submission to the consultation process, but the licence condition itself pre-empted a promised independent review of Next G network coverage."

What the minister and her colleagues did was simply gave the electorate what they wanted to hear, unencumbered by minor details such as the requirements of due process. Exactly what you would expect from politicians.

Telstra seems to expecting us, and the court, to regard the public utterances of politicians as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Good luck with that one.