11th September 2008 – Sydney, Australia – Phil Burgess might have spent three years in Australia, but he did not learn much.

As he prepares to move back to the US to become a paid consultant to Telstra, Mr Burgess continues to spin nonsense as fact.

This morning on ABC Radio, he claimed that when Telstra CEO, Sol Trujillo and his amigos arrived from the US to Australia, ‘everyone overseas was saying Telstra was being smothered by regulation’.

But one of Telstra’s own paid consultants to argue for reduced regulation, Professor Henry Ergas, was saying something quite different in other places.

Professor Ergas wrote on behalf of the Canadian telecommunications incumbent Bell Canada that:

“The Australian experience of a relatively light-handed regulatory regime shows that burdensome regulation at the retail level is not necessary for healthy competition to develop, even in markets such as Australia where the intrinsic conditions are not as favourable.”*

The “intrinsic conditions” comment is a reference to the fact that in Canada there is strong competition between cable TV network owners and telecommunications companies.

This competition does not exist in Australia of course, because Telstra owns the dominant cable company and makes sure there is no real competition.

But Telstra never has let the truth get in the way of its story in Australia.

Sovereign nonsense - Burgess ignorant of the Australian Constitution   

Also today, Mr Burgess is reported as saying that any move to structurally separate Telstra would be a breach of sovereign promise made in the T3 prospectus.

Perhaps he did not read the prospectus, where the Telstra management and board signed off a warning to prospective share applicants that the regulatory arrangements can be changed by the Government. For example, it includes the comment that “the Commonwealth has a broad discretion to impose additional regulatory obligations on Telstra.”

Certainly, Mr Burgess is ignorant of the Australian Constitution.

If he had bothered to learn anything about Australia he would know that the Government made no promise not to change regulation applying to Telstra as part of the T3 share offer, because it would have been illegal. No Parliament can restrict the activity of a future Parliament, so the election would have made such a promise meaningless.

It has been clear for some time, however, that Mr Burgess’ understanding of Australian law was based on watching a movie – The Castle. He pointed to that movie as the basis on which Telstra went to the High Court in an attempt to overturn the ability of the ACCC to regulate its market power.

The High Court, referring to the legal history of Australian telecommunications regulation rather than popular entertainment for guidance, comprehensively rejected Telstra’s claim, saying its arguments were “synthetic”.

Mr Burgess apparently missed all of that during his time in Australia. Perhaps this just shows that it is hard to hear the truth when you spend all your time shouting.

Ends

*http://www.telecomreview.ca/epic/site/tprp-gecrt.nsf/vwapj/Appendix_D8.pdf/$FILE/Appendix_D8.pdf

About “Tell the Truth Telstra” (T4):
The Tell the Truth Telstra (T4) campaign was launched in April 2007, to counter Telstra’s campaign of misinformation on telecommunications and broadband competition and regulation in Australia.

Tell the Truth Telstra is an initiative of Australia’s leading telecommunications carriers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) including AAPT, Adam Internet, Austar, iiNet, Internode, Macquarie Telecom, Optus, Primus Telecom, Telarus, TransACT, Unwired, WestNet and the Competitive Carriers’ Coalition.

The Tell the Truth Telstra (T4) initiative commenced with a united complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) asking it to investigate whether Telstra’s conduct amounts to misleading and deceptive conduct.

The Tell the Truth Telstra (T4) initiative documents a list of Telstra’s myths and highlights their misleading nature.  An accompanying education program includes an information kit for MPs, a public website , and a series of information sessions for MPs, exposing the truth behind Telstra’s attempt to gain relief from regulation

PRIVACY POLICY