Telstra masters the art of the leading question

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 23 September 2007 16:33

Opinion and Analysis

Telstra has sent out a survey to all shareholders with their dividend statement saying it is "about important policy issues that affect the competitive environment of the company and the value of your shareholding." It's a joke.

It will have any professional market researcher or consumer survey professional either rolling about laughing or throwing up their arms in dismay. The first principle of any self-respecting survey is that the questions should be neutral, not pre-disposing the respondent to any particular answer. Telstra's survey questions (available online) are anything but.

Despite this, Telstra says it has commissioned an independent market research company, Global Reviews, to conduct this research. This does not mean that Global Reviews compiled the questions or designed the survey, it may simply be responsible for gathering the responses and for analysing and reporting on the outcome. Still, it beats me why it would put its name to something like this. Perhaps Telstra is a very big customer.

But, back to those questions. Here's one example. "The Australian Government recently decided to give nearly $1 billion of taxpayer's money to subsidise the SingTel Optus/OPEL consortium to build a network that largely duplicates the coverage already provided on Telstra's shareholder-financed Next G wireless broadband network. Do you agree or disagree with this decision by the Government to subsidise the OPEL consortium?

The statement may be true but Next G, so far, is not offering broadband access at rates comparable to ADSL or the WiFi based services operated by numerous small operators in regional Australia. And you know if anyone describes a government expenditure as "taxpayers' money" they disapprove of it.