About Citizens Against Selling Telstra

Citizens Against Selling Telstra (CAST) is a group of ordinary, concerned citizens that are against the sale of Telstra. We do not believe that Telstra has met its obligations to rural Australia by improving its telecommunications network. In fact, we have many examples of people living and working close (within ten kilometres) to our National Capital, Canberra, who cannot access the same level of Telstra services that people within the urban areas of Canberra can access.

We are a non-politically aligned group who believe Telstra belongs to the Australian people. Telstra should not be treated as if it were the personal property of a select few government ministers to be sold off for ideological reasons.

The majority of Australians reject the full privatisation of Telstra because they feel that standards, especially for people in rural areas, will drop as the need to make a profit increases. Telstra already makes large annual profits, and these profits can be used to continuously improve telecommunications services, retire debt, or be put into other areas such as education, health and the environment.

We would like other concerned Australians to join us in our opposition to the sale of Telstra by coming along to our meetings or by starting a CAST group in their own area.

The constitution of CAST is to be found here.

HOW WE STARTED: A public meeting was called and advertised on local radio and television and in local newspapers. Like minded people attended the meeting and we started our group. We do not have affiliation with any political party and we have decided to keep things that way.

OTHER ACTION: Some of our group had previously carried out our own actions, such as writing to our local member and local newspapers, phoning radio talkback shows, and talking to our friends, family and work colleagues to highlight the issues surrounding the Telstra sale.

Suggested Guidelines for forming of CAST groups

Disclaimer

This web site is presented by CAST (Citizens Against Selling Telstra) for the purpose of disseminating information free of charge for the benefit of the public.
CAST monitors the quality of the information available on this web site and updates the information regularly.
However, CAST does not guarantee, and accepts no legal liability whatsoever arising from or connected to, the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of any material contained on this web site or on any linked site.
CAST recommends that users exercise their own skill and care with respect to their use of this web site and that users carefully evaluate the accuracy, currency, completeness and relevance of the material on the web site for their purposes.
This web site is not a substitute for independent professional advice and users should obtain any appropriate professional advice relevant to their particular circumstances.
The material on this web site may include the views or recommendations of third parties, which do not necessarily reflect the views of CAST, or indicate its commitment to a particular course of action.

Links to external web sites

This web site contains links to other web sites that are external to CAST. CAST takes reasonable care in linking web sites but has no direct control over the content of the linked sites, or the changes that may occur to the content on those sites. It is the responsibility of the user to make their own decisions about the accuracy, currency, reliability and correctness of information contained in linked external web sites.
Links to external web sites do not constitute an endorsement or a recommendation of any material on those sites or of any third party products or services offered by, from or through those sites. Users of links provided by this web site are responsible for being aware of which organisation is hosting the web site they visit.

Privacy Statement

CAST (Citizens Against Selling Telstra) abides by the Guidelines for Federal and ACT Government World Wide Web Sites issued by the Australian Privacy Commissioner.
As a general rule, CAST does not collect Personal Information about you when you visit the site. You can generally visit the site without revealing Personal Information, unless you choose to provide such information. The information received depends upon what you do when visiting the site. Any information collected will be treated according to the guidlines mentioned above and will not be passed on to a third party or used for any other purposes.

About This Web Site

This web site was originally set up through the generous voluntary efforts of Ed Whalan, himself not a member of CAST. The web site has since been added to by a number of CAST members. These efforts are being coordinated by James Sinnamon.

There are already a number of other sites devoted specifically to issues relating to Telstra. The purpose of this site is to help focus the widespread community opposition to the sale of Telstra toward effective lobbying and political action, which we believe can stop the sale. We have included some suggestions as to what you can do if you share our strong opposition to the sale.

This web site is a work in progress. We intend that this site will include a comprehensive and detailed case against the privatisation of Telstra. In particular we aim to refute the many false and disingenuous arguments which advanced by the proponents of the sale.

If you think that you may be able to help towards this, we would welcome your help. You may simply choose to join our mailing lists in order to contribute your your knowledge and ideas, or you may be able to contribute articles or graphical art to this site, or perhaps even make suggestion as to how the presentation of this site may be improved.

Copyright Notice

Permission to copy any of the original material on this site is hereby granted, provided that the source of the material is acknowledged within the copied document, and that URL links back to the original documents are included with any electronic reproduction of these documents.

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About this page : This page explains about the group Citizens Aganst Selling Telstra which created this web site.