The Federal Opposition has confirmed it will vote against wide-ranging legislation being introduced by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to reform the telecommunications sector, including the break-up of Telstra’s wholesale and retail divisions.

Conroy’s last attempt to introduce the Telecommunications Legislation Amentment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards ) Bill into the Senate was shot down in flames several weeks ago, but at the time the Greens — who the Government will now need to get the bill across the line — had signalled their readiness to debate it.

The legislation is listed on the Senate run-sheet for today. In a statement yesterday, shadow Communications Minister Tony Smith (pictured) described the legislation as a “deliberate assault” on Telstra, its 1.4 million shareholders and 30,000 employees.

“As we’ve said from day one, Telstra shareholders have every reason to be outraged by Labor’s plans to force the break-up of the company,” said Smith. “The Coalition has never advocated the forced break up of Telstra and this was never part of Labor’s plan before the last election.”

The politician said the Telstra break-up attempt was “all about trying to prop up” the Government’s “reckless” $43 billion National Broadband Network plan — which he said the Government had embarked upon without a cost-benefit analysis or a business plan.

“This bully boy legislative attack on Telstra and its shareholders is an admission that their NBN isn’t commercially viable.”

Smith called for Conroy to release both the NBN implementation study as well as the final legislation relating to the NBN Company, which has so far only been released in draft form.

On February 24, Conroy’s office confirmed he had not yet received the implementation study, which is being put together by consulting firms McKinsey and KPMG, despite the fact that it was due in February.

The implementation study was originally slated to determine the operating arrangements for the NBN Company, as well as detailing network design and financial details — for example, attracting private sector investment.

Image credit: Office of Tony Smith

Related posts:

1. Coalition tiptoes around Telstra break-up bill
2. Fiery Senate delays Telstra break-up bill
3. Telstra bill hits parliament, supported by … Telstra
4. Fletcher backs Telstra in Alan Jones chat
5. Telstra delays NBN vote

1. jim
   Posted 10/03/2010 at 12:55 pm | Permalink | Reply

   The legislation is a way of forcing Telstra to sell parts of it to the NBN which may or may not be a good thing. It would be simpler to make ithe NBN make a compulsory acquisition for a “just and fair” price (Court determined) and avoid all the huffing and puffing.

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 10/03/2010 at 3:29 pm | Permalink | Reply

     heh but I think that “just and fair price” might be veeerry expensive ;)

2. steven
   Posted 10/03/2010 at 8:24 am | Permalink | Reply

   Not breaking up Telstra would be a bad.

   We totally forget about the small ISP’s such as the one I operated. We could only use Telstra Wholesale as a supplier and had to put up with paying more for wholesale services than Telstra retail. After many years the ACCC were able to legislate this by court action, by which time most ISP’s were put out of business having to compete against Telstra retail.

   The only business model that Telstra is familiar with is where they operate as a monopoly. We got screwed over then, and they will screw over every one they can this time too.

   In the long term, the best outcome will be a wholesale NBN that is not involved in any retail level operations.

3. Renai LeMay
   Posted 10/03/2010 at 8:39 am | Permalink | Reply

   hey Steven,

   I think that the Government definitely needs to implement a wholesale-only National Broadband Network or break up Telstra, but I’m not yet convinced of the need to do both … and as it seems to be definitely going ahead with the NBN plan, I’m questioning the wisdom of the Telstra break-up — it seems heavy handed to me.

   The only convincing argument I’ve heard so far is that because it will take the NBN Co many years to finalise its fibre rollout around Australia, that the break-up of Telstra will be needed to provide fair terms to the market in the short term.

   However, with Telstra behaving in a lot more conciliatory way since David Thodey took over as CEO, I’m not sure of the need.

   I’m not convinced from their rhetoric that the Opposition truly understands the issues though.

   It will be v. interesting to see how this plays out in the Senate.