Any one who wants to understand why Australia’s telecommunications have been stuck in the 20th century while the rest of the world has leapt ahead need only read the Former Howard Government Communications and IT minister Richard Alston’s hilarious contribution in The Australian today.
He has entered the public discussion about the NBN in time to remind us all that for him and the government he was part of, communications policy was only ever about Telstra.
Why was it so?
One of the many significant acts of sabotage on Australia’s prospects for a future proof network during the crucial growth years of the last decade was the Howard Government’s obsession with grabbing the cash from the privatisation of Telstra.
Nothing else mattered. The raft of disconnected, visionless grants programs only served to buy the crucial senate votes needed to pass the privatisation legislation.
Each time a new privatisation bill was brought forward, they came up with a new set of cynical, piecemeal grants designed to buy off interest groups.
As evidence mounted that competition in the industry was suffocating because of weak policy, Alston parroted whatever line he was fed by Telstra to pretend it was otherwise. As Australian slid further and further down the international broadband league tables, Alston infamously declared that Australians didn’t want broadband because it was all about porn and gaming. Why? Because it was in Telstra’s interests that Australians continued to buy old technology services at higher prices.
Telstra has reaped billions of profit through the decade where it relied on a tame government to do anything it asked. It was a mutual back scratch: Higher profits for Telstra equalled higher privatisation returns for Howard. The other part of the equation that was never discussed of course was that this was all financed by ordinary Australians paying inflated prices for poor services.
I know because as shadow minister for IT, I heard those complaints from people suffering with broadband blocking pair gain systems in their networks. In Senate inquiry after inquiry I heard how poorly Australia was doing compared to the rest of the world.
So I can only smile wryly as Alston climbs out of his political grave today to once more sing Telstra’s song. The substance of the piece, despite his token line about consumer access and low prices, demonstrates he is still completely captive of Telstra and that it still completely escapes him that the nbn is about essential infrastucture for Australian citizens by building an industry, not subsidising a lazy monopolist.
It is probably too much to ask that one day he realises just how disgraceful and damaging the Howard Government’s lost decade truly was.
