Voting against the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment...

Voting against the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 will be supported by many in the community.

The Bill is clearly designed, in part, to break up and cripple a major Australian company, Telstra, which former Governments sold to the public as a secure and sound investment. If the current Government believes the structure of Telstra requires change, it should repurchase the company at a fair price and then make whatever changes it desires. It is completely unfair and inequitable to make those from whom the Government originally profited (when they sold the Company), accept, in the name of competition, the cost of Telstras forced demise.

Senator Conroy understands that there could be a constitutional requirement that the Government compensate Telstra if it acquires the Company or Telstras assets. He is reported to believe that court awarded compensation could exceed $20 billion and that Government should do all it can to work around this constitutional obligation. Instead he is seeking to use the legislative powers of Parliament to blackmail Telstra into agreeing to voluntarily structural separation and the sale, at a substantial discount, of its asserts to the Government. Sounds more like the approach of an autocratic dictatorship rather than that of the executive of a democratic Australia. Thank God for the checks and balances the existence of the Senate affords our citizens.