scaremongering is in full swing

Scaremongering is in full swing

The dumping of Telstra from the NBN process has triggered the appearance of articles that can only be described as scaremongering.
We see the well-respected Ivor Ries warning us that we will go broke, as Telstra might put in a claim for $80bn as a result of what has happened.
What a load of rubbish!

We all know that this will never happen. Fortunately the editor of the article counteracted that piece of scaremongering by citing verdicts from the High Court indicating that this is national infrastructure and the government has every right to regulate it – this was a unanimous verdict.
I was also appalled by a front-page article in The Australian, which accused Huawei of being a ‘shadowy Chinese company’. How this piece survived the supposedly rigorous editorial process puzzles me. It can only be labelled a deliberate attack on a well-respected telecoms company.
The article was loaded with alarmist talk about the possible involvement of Huawei creating the potential for our country to fall into the hands of the Chinese government. It spoke of espionage concerns in a way that was chillingly reminiscent of media in reporting in the McArthur years after WWII.
The Australian people deserve better journalism than this from such a well-respected newspaper.
I have been in Shenzeng and have personally visited this ultra modern company. The campus even includes a university that delivers something like 1,000 engineers to the market each year. There are not many telecoms factory sites in the world that are as modern as the Huawei – and, for that matter, the complexes also situated in this city that belong to their colleagues at ZTE in China are equally amongst the most modern in the telcos world. There is nothing shadowy about these companies. There are plenty of stories of western telco vendors involved in a range of scandals, should we therefore also not use them?
Huawei has been an active partner in several industry activities in Australia and their people are highly respected by their Australian colleagues.
We believe that the readers of Australian newspapers deserve facts – positive or negative. This piece of reporting, however, merely serves to encourage rumour and to generate fear, one of the cheapest of political tools.

Paul Budde.