Stuart Corner
Thursday, 12 June 2008 15:05
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 4
The committee was required "consider the impacts of such a proposal on: the efficient provision of services to end-users, including businesses and residential customers in regional, rural and remote Australia; Telstra's ability to continue to provide a full array of telecommunications and advanced data services; ongoing investment in new network infrastructure; the wider telecommunications industry; the telecommunications regulatory regime; Telstra's shareholder value and its shareholders; and the commonwealth budget."
Alston was no fan of the idea, the exercise was undertaken to silence the ALP's calls for such a move. Nevertheless the industry rose to the occasion and a total of 60 submissions were received. These had just been made public and the enquiry was all set to start hearings when Alston canned it.
The reason: release by the ALP of a report entitled Separating Telstra: Protecting the Interests of Minority Shareholder. It had been funded by the Chifley Research Centre, a left wing think tank. Releasing of the report, the ALP's communications spokesman, Lindsay Tanner, said "After considering the detailed advice in this report, Labor believes that whatever the telecommunications policy merits of full structural separation of Telstra may be, the existence of the minority private shareholding in Telstra and the cost and complexity therefore associated with such separation, make that an inappropriate strategy for reforming Telstra."
Labor, he said "will accordingly focus its future reform approach on improvements to the regulatory accounting framework and/or the 'virtual separation" option outlined in [the ALP's earlier report] Reforming Telstra." And that was the end of it.
What is being contemplated today in connection with the proposed National Broadband Network project is that control of the new infrastructure that will, hopefully, result will not be vested in any organisation that can manipulate the way telecommunications services providers gain access to that network to advantage any one against another. Nor will it be able to game, or have any incentive to game, applicable regulation to delay, compromise or complicate this access."
This has not stopped Telstra chairman Donald McGauchie painting the most extreme form of structural separation as the fate other would like to impose on Telstra, saying: "[Fairfax Media Ltd chief executive David] Kirk is the latest in a long line of self-serving competitors who are using the National Broadband Network as an excuse to call for an Australian shareholder-owned company to be broken up."
CONTINUED
