Why I am not communications minister
21 Feb 2006Tough job being communications minister, I reckon. On one side you’ve got your beloved coalition partners the Nationals saying they won’t budge on phone services in the bush. And on the other side you’ve got Telstra saying it will lose squillions of dollars if the government enforces the pricing set by the ACCC to give other phone companies access to the phone network or otherwise be forced to provide commercially unattractive services. How do you balance the natural tendency of Liberal party types to suck up to business and let it do whatever it wants with the natural tendency of National party types to demand free handouts for no good financial or even logical reason?
Here’s what I would do:
Right, Telstra. Shut the fuck up. You didn’t pay for the phone network, taxpayers did. It doesn’t belong to you and neither do the enormous profits you’ve banked on getting from exploiting it. The government paid for the phone network so the government will set the price. Final word. What are you gonna do, vote Labor? Shut the fuck up.
Now you, whinging hick farmers. Shut the fuck up. It costs more to put a phone line out to where you are because you live in the middle of bloody nowhere. So you should pay more for a phone line. End of story. You want broadband, fine! Pay for it. There is absolutely no reason why people in the city should pay to subsidise your phone services so quit throwing your political weight around demanding Commie handouts. What are you gonna do, vote Labor? Shut the fuck up.
Surely they can get do some dodgy preselection deal to get me into the house of reps and give me the job . . .
[...] Look, I know I’ve previously painted the Nationals as whingeing, handouts-addicted communist dinosaurs. But to be not entirely unfair, people in the country are among the most vulnerable when it comes to Corporate Greed vs The Little Guy. And the main point of regulation is to smooth over inequities that occur where the free market fails to. Well, that’s the point of regulation in my little fantasy world, anyway. [...]