Arise the desiccated coconut, page-68

You have made a few omissions and both parties have have made major asett sales..

Labor sold CSL for a song it has a MC of $141 billion compared to Telstra $47 billion.Qantas was privatized between 1992 and 1985.
Labor started the privatization of CBA in 1991.

Before the NCP, the federal Labor government had already begun reorganizing telecommunications along a corporate model. In 1995, Telecom became Telstra which, though still publicly owned, now operated as a business.

As it turned out, the government chose to sell Australian Airlines to Qantas for $400 million, a deal announced in June 1992.

That made airline privatization much easier, with the government first selling 25 per cent of Qantas to British Airways in 1993.

Cabinet papers for 1990 and 1991, released by the National Archives of Australia, show the Labor government of Bob Hawke embarked on major asset sales, setting some enduring principles.

The government had sold off a range of assets including surplus houses, properties and equipment but it was now coming to the big ones - airlines and telecommunications companies.

First was the loss-making government-owned satellite operator AUSSAT, formed in 1981 and sold, along with a telecommunications license, to Optus for $800 million.

Before the sale, the government paid $799 million to wipe out AUSSAT debt. So net benefit to the taxpayer wasn't great, although the government did free itself of an asset which would only cost more and more.

John Howard took corporatization to its logical conclusion by initiating the sale of Telstra in 1997. However, Labor PM Julia Gillard supplied a useful reminder of the bipartisan investment in privatization when she sold off the last of the government’s Telstra shares in 2011.