should never have been sold

The problem with the Telstra sale is very simple.

Australia is an extraordinarily large country with the majority of its population located in a very small proportion of its area around two thirds of the seaboard.

The rest of the population lives where a huge amount of our export income is generated from.

In that huge sp@rsely populated 90% of the country the cost of capital investment in telephone equipment is not balanced by the potential return.

This is the same with other infrastructure needs such as roads for example.

So whether the government likes it or not it is a logical impossibility to unload one of the true functions of an Australian Federal government onto the private sector and hope that someone will keep installing high quality infrastructure in high wealth generation areas (and others such as remote communities that also have a right to expect a decent communications link to the rest of Australia and the World.)

No public company would or should be forced to deliver uneconomic services. Its the governments job to do that on behalf of our national community where the true public benefit resides.

The conclusion then is that none of TLS should ever have been sold and the sham that has just been exposed as to what a mess TLS currently is after being stripped of dividends and capital reinvestment to prop up the share price confirms that.

The fund that Barnaby Joyce 'won' for his rural constituents is a joke in the context that its yield of maybe $300 to 400 million per year (presuming its NOT made up of TLS shares) would require one third of that JUST to fix Gladestones phone system little less the other rural structures around the country.

Donald Horne was absolutely right.

To misquote him slightly from memory - Australia IS the lucky country RUN by second class people who are fortune enough to share in the spoils.

Of course it upsets the government to have their cover blown on the financial state of TLS before they can unload the remaining 51% on the - until now - unsuspecting mug punters.

I believe Sol is exactly what TLS needed now to restore reality and call it like it is. I'm sorry for existing TLS shareholders of whom I am not one from an inability to understand how this whole mess could be proceeding and the knowledge that most TLS shareholders have lost heaps.

The government is proceeding from what I believe is a flawed ideological stnce - for the life of me I cannot understand why the National Party are supportive of it for one - and that ideology is now exposed for all its flaws.

Unlike some countries with low land mass and high populations I DO believe Australia needs a national (read nationalised) telecommunications carrier that can develop a truly national framework for the benefit of our total countryt and not just the profitable bits and then the competitors can be regulated to have to pay for appropriate access to spread the wholesale cost of that to everyone that wants to play in the Australian telecommunications market.

Cheers,