Spokesperson for Citizens Against Selling Telstra, James Sinnamon, today called upon the Australian public not to buy shares in a company which they already rightfully own.
"Together with their parents and grandparents the Australian public, has already paid for Telstra many times over in taxes and hefty phone bills. In return, Australians should have had affordable access to 21st century telecommunications years ago, like Canada."
"Instead Australia's telecommunications network is a patchwork of brand-names piggy-backed on the original deteriorating electronic infrastructure and harassing us at dinner for our custom."
Sinnamon observed that Australians have been forced to sit back and watch the value of their investment destroyed firstly by corporatisation and then by partial privatisation.
He said that this loss would be even greater than what was lost by Australians who paid $7.80 for shares in T2.
During the 2004 election campaign Communications Minister Helen Coonan maintained that a condition of full privatisation would be that taxpayers would obtain 'value' for the sale. This was widely considered to mean that the sale price would have to rise to $5.25, still substantially down on the T2 sale price.
"Instead", Mr Sinnamon said, "The value has plumetted to $3.45. So why the rush to sell?"
Mr Sinnamon remarked that the Government's main 'reason', that it hoped to avoid selling Telstra during the 2007 election year, sits oddly with John Howard's claim that he had obtained a popular mandate to privatise in the 2004 elections.
Contrary to what John Howard has said since the 2004 elections, Senator Helen Coonan told electors at the time, the "... claim that the election's a referendum on whether Telstra should be privatised is drawing a very long bow indeed, ..."
She had also said that talk of full privatisation was "jumping the gun" without certain conditions being fulfilled.
During the 2004 campaign privatisation was not mentioned by John Howard in any of his campaign speeches nor in any publicly available policy documents released by the Coalition.
The reason was that John Howard and all those who are now pushing through the bargain basement sale of our remaining stake in Telstra, knew perfectly well from all the opinion polls that most of the public remained opposed to the sale.
"Had privatisation become a major election issue", Mr Sinnamon said, "John Howard would not be Prime Minister today."
Mr Sinnamon said that it was vital that the public not stand back and let control of this asset be taken out of their hands and into the hands of corporate executives, such as Sol Trujillo, whose severance package alone had cost shareholders in the American telco US West a staggering AU$95million in 2000.