Like 60-odd other suckers, I put a submission into the House of Representatives committee inquiring into the structural separation of Telstra. I knew it was an Alston stunt, designed to embarrass Labor, but I thought it might provide a useful forum for public debate. Apparently Alston has now realised this and panicked. Even though he had the numbers on the committee, the evidence showed that his policy was incoherent and unsustainable. So he’s ordered the troops to put up the barricades.

Here’s the email I just got from the Committee secretariat.

Dear Professor Quiggin
The committee has decided NOT to hold the public hearing scheduled for
tomorrow, 7th February, 2003. It has also decided NOT to hold any of the
scheduled public hearings.
I apologise for any inconvenience.

You can read the submissions in PDF form here. Mine’s number 40. I’ll have it up on the Website soon. As regular readers might expect, I call for the core operations of Telstra to be renationalised and the rest to be spun off and fully privatised.

Update As several commentators have noted, the Committee was killed off after Labor announced that it was abandoning plans for a split up. While deplorable, this kind of backflip on Labor’s part is par for the political course. By contrast, the government’s suppression of a Parliamentary inquiry is, as far as I can tell, unprecedented, and Christopher Pyne, who was Alston’s hatchetman in the Reps, deserves to be condemned along with Alston. The Fin editorial today (subscription required) issued the appropriate condemnation, but it was all too hard for most of the rest of the press.

While Labor looks a bit silly here, Alston looks even worse. The fact that he was unable to find credible defenders for the government’s line, even in the context of a the kind of kangaroo court Pyne was clearly ready to operate speaks volumes for the incoherence of telecommunications policy in this country.