Nationals Federal Council gags debate on Telstra, 18 Sep 05
Senate votes for full privatisation, but fight to save Telstra not over, 18 Sep 05
Launch of www.telstory.com, a forum site to record and discuss Telstra customer experiences - 7 Dec 04
Provincial Cities Association Opposes Sale of Telstra - 30 Nov 04
Family First to soften stance against Telstra sale? - 21 Nov 04
CEPU calls for national plebiscite on Telstra privatisation - 18 Nov 04

ABC online reports (see story, opposite) that a motion concerning Telstra has been dropped by delegates to the National Party's annual federal council.

The motion called on the Nationals federal council to acknowledge that the full sale of Telstra represents a major concern to rural and regional Australia and outlined conditions to be met before the further sale of Telstra proceeds.

Bruce Scott called for the motion to be removed claiming it had already been addressed when the Telstra sale bills passed the Parliament last week.

Original from The Australian, 16 Sep 05

In fact, the Telstra sale bills were not properly discussed in Parliament due to the gagging of the debate by the Government with the support of the National Party.

Already, on the day following the passage of the legislation, it had been revealed that at least one hole in the legislation had not been fixed due to the Senate not having been allowed to properly scrutinise the legislation. Barnaby Joyce and his rural constituents had been shortchanged by $67 million in the deal, which even at face value, was completely inadequate for the needs of rural telecommunications users. What other holes exist in a deal remains to be seen.

The question to be asked is why did all the delegates to the Nationals' federal council agree to the gagging of this debate? At least two branches remain opposed to the sale. As an example, the web site of the South Australian branch of the Nationals states, "The Nationals - SA are totally opposed to the sale of Telstra until rural and regional services are on par with metropolitan areas." As recently as 1 August a state conference had vowed to oppose the sale of Telstra.

On 13 August the state conference of the Western Australian branch of the National Party had passed a resolution stating that would only support the full sale of Telstra if the Federal Government were to commission an independent inquiry into telecommunications spending needs in the bush that required that there be a thorough inquiry into Telstra before any privatisation legislation was to be passed. The hurried one day Senate inquiry, which occurred on Friday 9 September could not have been construed as a "a thorough inquiry" by any stretch of the imagination.

It was to be expected that the federal National party machine would not wish to discuss Telstra any further, however, it is a mystery, why delegates from branches, still on record as being opposed to the sale, would have agreed to the suppression of the debate.

At 6:30PM, on Wednesday 14 September, at the point when debate had been 'guillotined', National Senator Barnaby Joyce, who, himself, had been absent during the course of the debate, against his election promise of last year, voted in favour of full privatisation, thus ensuring the passage of the legislation.

Senator Brett Mason, also from Joyce's home state of Queensland actually told the Senate on the evening of 13 September that, "Of all the emails I get, 95 per cent are against the sale of Telstra". He added "Nearly everyone who comes into my office and nearly every email I get is against the sale of Telstra."

The whole exercise was, of course, a grotesque abuse by this Government of the Senate majority it had obtained, to some extent, through a voting system which left many electors in the dark about where their Senate preferences were to be finally allocated.

John Howard had promised, on his election night, to be humble in his use of the power handed to him by the Australian people. Instead, the hastily drafted bills were rushed through in record time. Pleas by every member of the public appearing before the Senate committee to be allowed more time to make submissions about the legislation fell onto Barnaby Joyce's deaf ears.

On the previous weekend, a hole had been discovered in relation to the $2 billion dollars to be placed in an interest bearing deposit to earn money to pay for the maintenance of the rural network. A close reading of the legislation had found the wording was for "up to $2billion" to be set aside. This caused Senator Joyce to threaten to withdraw his support for the bill as well as to insist that more time be given to allow for consideration of the bills.

However, early in the week, the Queensland National Party machine, which had previously stood in opposition to the sale leant on Joyce to get him to vote for the sale. Bruce Scott, the National member for Maranoa stated that all stops should be taken out to ensure that the bill be got through before the end of the weekend ending Sunday 18 September. However after Joyce backed down completely, even that length of time had not been allowed.

There can be no guarantee that this Government will not stoop to breaking yet another election promise in order to achieve full privatisation, but it remains to be seen if they can bear the political cost of doing so.

Even if the figure of $5.25 is somehow achieved, many ordinary Australians have to be persuaded by this Government to part with their own money to buy only some of what they now still own. If the response from 'mum and dad shareholders' to the sale is poor, it may become politically even more difficult for them to proceed.

So there are at least a few avenues by which the sale of Telstra can still be blocked if there is a vigorous high profile campaign against the sale. For our part, CAST, will do what it can together with community groups, political parties, parliamentarians and various unions including the CEPU, the union which represents many Telstra employees, all of whom are opposed to the sale, to do what we can to bring this campaign into being.

Previous social movements, for example, the campaign to end Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, have shown that Australian governments are not altogether impervious to concerted campaigns in opposition to their policies. We believe that if 70% of the Australian public remain opposed to the sale then it can be stopped.

Even, if we fail to stop privatisation and we are forced to watch our Telstra slip into the hands of private investors who have little interest in serving the needs of ordinary telecommunications users, at least it is vital for the future of our democracy that those politicians are held fully to account for the harm that their actions will cause to their constituents.

During last year's election campaign CAST used its limited resources to try to persuade persuade Australian electors to vote for candidates who opposed privatisation against politicians who stood for privatisation. Whilst we advocated, wherever possible, a primary vote to the political parties and independent candidates who had shown the strongest and most consistent opposition to privatisation, in practice this would have meant, on a two-party preferred basis, a vote for Labor in a number of seats. This was not to gloss over the poor record of previous Labor governments in regards to Telstra in particular and privatisation in general, but, nevertheless, the prospects of maintaining Telstra in public hands would have been realistically greater, if not absolute, should a party with a stance in opposition to privatisation have been elected to Government.

In spite of our efforts many, who were opposed to privatisation still voted for coalition candidates anyway. Some coalition candidates maintained a stance of opposition including the Queensland Nationals, and National Kay Hull and Liberal Alby Schultz. However, it appears that most who voted for coalition candidates did so, because the Government and their newsmedia backers had succeeded in downplaying the Telstra issue whilst elevating other fear factors such as the interest rates scare.

If those who voted in favour of privatisation. still manage to scrape back in the 2007 elections, they can only take this as encouragement to continue treat their electors in the same fashion.