Tim Blair cites my recent observation that privatisation in Australia is political poison and goes on to ask for further advice on the issue
Take the next step, Quiggler; tell us which industries or businesses should be nationalised. People will like it, apparently.
I’m happy to oblige. The best case for (re)nationalisation is undoubtedly Telstra, minus peripheral bits like BigPond which should be wholly privatised. I’ve been making this argument for years.
Although Tim correctly points out the logical symmetry – if people hate privatisation, and clearly they do, then they should welcome nationalisation – he seems to be in some doubt about the politics. There are overseas examples to help here. Helen Clark’s government renationalised both accident compensation and Air New Zealand and didn’t seem to suffer any political damage, but of course, that’s New Zealand. More interestingly, the government led by Tim’s UK namesake renationalised Railtrack, to widespread applause, a couple of years ago.
What these examples have in common is that the privatisation was badly bungled, so that renationalisation was easy to sell. Although it isn’t, like Railtrack and Air NZ, on the verge of bankruptcy, Telstra is also a prime example of a bungled privatisation.
As Tim notes, given the deep public opposition to privatisation, exhibited recently over Snowy Hydro, there’s no reason to suppose that renationalisation would be unpopular. The problem is that the elite (not the people who drink cafe lattes, but those in both parties, banks and big business who actually run the show) benefit from privatisation and have no desire to stop it.
Update Tim liked this suggestion, and now he wants more. Next cab off the rank, in my view, should be airports. The privatisation of these monopolies was followed by massive increases in navigation charges, as well as a whole string of petty imposts on travellers. Another large part of the attraction, in Brisbane at least, was the ability to (mis)use the power of the Commonwealth to evade state and local controls on land development. And the involvement of politically well-connected types like Max Moore-Wilton only made the whole thing worse in every respect.
John Quiggin 
Renationalising the Telstra network would be easy given the federal government’s low debt. The Commonwealth should also rename it the PMG and make officers wear uniforms like the good old days.
I think a Commonwealth Peoples Bank would go down well in the current environment. No fees would save on the need to pay exorbitant CEO salaries. We would have to wait for a property crash for that one.
Also, a movement to eliminate the plague of toll roads that have infested our suburbs would also be welcome. Macquarie Bank et al have just replaced the old Dept of Public Works, at about 3 X the cost in management fees. With about 10 X the engineering fiascos. Free our freeways now!
It is interesting that the most unpopular privatisation in recent years has been Sydney’s Cross City Tunnel. This brought the class war home to the economic elite and they did not like it one little bit.
PS Elites of all types should have their noses rubbed in it for as long as possible. The latte drinking cultural elite Wets could also benefit from a prolonged period of exile to the Western Suburbs war zone that their nusto cultural policies have helped to create. Bring the cultural war home to the culturati.
Nationalise latte now!
Telstra has one piece that needs to stay in public hands: access rights to the conduits in which their cables run. They don’t even own the conduits themselves – strictly speaking they are owned or at least governed by your local council. But no-one other than Telstra gets to decide who puts cables in there.
But the rest? None of it is a natural monopoly so why should it be renationalised? Telstra gets its butt kicked in every market other than the ones in which they have monopoly power. Why would the public want to renationalise dog businesses like those?
If you did nationalise cable conduits then in my view they should not in fact be nationalised but rather ownership passed to local councils.
I think the privatisation of Telstra could have been done better. However I don’t support renationalisation. Although I don’t support the future fund either.
I do applaud John Quiggin for declaring his hand on this issue.
Thanks, Professor Quiggin, for helping to breathe life back into this very important issue. I have copied this to the web site of Citizens Against Selling Telstra, which has been badly neglected in recent months. I trust that this is OK under the terms of the “Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.1 Australia License”.
Also, note the new escape clause in Telstra’s charter that requires that it maintain a presence in the bush:
Barnaby Joyce is again grumbling, but he can’t say that he wasn’t warned by his own constituents who didn’t even want him to vote for the sale in the first place.
If he had kept his election promise, and voted against privatisation, we would not be in this mess today.
BLAIR’S FAULTY LOGIC
Q says “Although Tim [Blair] correctly points out the logical symmetry – if people hate privatisation, and clearly they do, then they should welcome nationalisation…”
At the risk of being pedantic, Blair’s point is based on a non sequitur. “Privatisation” always involves a move away from the status quo. Implied in the term is that the item in question was (prior to its privatisation) in public hands. Likewise, “nationalisation” implies that the item was in private hands. A conservative (in the sense of one with strong faith in existing structures) may logically be against both privatisation and nationalisation.
“If you did nationalise cable conduits then in my view they should not in fact be nationalised but rather ownership passed to local councils.”
In principle a good idea, but in practice it would be very inefficient for a service provider to have to negotiate with each individual council.
On another note: there’s no way Telstra enjoys the same public status as the snowy scheme. I doubt there’s an Australian over the age of 25 who hasn’t been on the receiving end of a surly, union-protected, Telstra customer support representative, or witnessed the pedestrian work-practices of their non-contract service personnel.
Telstra is more national disgrace than national icon.
At the risk of being pedantic…
well if you won’t, i know someone who will.
If it were certain telephony was always to be delivered efficiently by wires then there is a case for govt ownership of such a natural monopoly. Technological developments suggest no such thing and hence there is no more case for taxpayer risk in owning Testra than there is for them owning the Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, or their own domestic Kodak for that matter. We have already witnessed the significant devaluation of Telstra due to the ALP’s dishonest rearguard campaign. Squandered would be the more apt description. The only way to maximise the sale value would have been an unconditional sale, rather than the cross-subsidy rules for remote users. Taxpayers tend to think this is a costless exercise to them, whereas if cross subsidy is clearly defined on the expenditure side of govt budgets, alongside roads, health, university expenditure and the like, then they can more readily appreciate the true cost to themselves. Unfortunately such gross cross-subsidies can seldom be hidden from the inexorable forces of international competitiveness and that can be expressed in exporting jobs to avoid another weight in the saddlebags of local industry. I guess John needs to ask himself if NZ unemployment is at the same level and trends as Australias, when coming down in favour of more govt ownership or not. So do we all, although the benefits and costs can seem so remote to us individually, as to be meaningless in our overall deliberations. That is a fallacy of composition, as the Soviets found to their dismay. That’s the anomaly over privatisation Tim Blair is rightly alluding to.
John,
Telstra Mobile currently has significant competition (eg Optus and Vodafone). Would you nationalise Telstra Mobile or would you include it along with BigPond as a peripheral bit that should stay private?
Regards,
Terje.
I don’t think that Telstra should be re-nationalised, though I do think that the status quo is less than wonderful.
What should happen (or should have happened prior to the original float) is for Telstra’s wholesale and retail divisions to be forcibly separated. There’s a strong argument for tight regulation of the wholesale division, and even a reasonable argument for keeping it under government control (though I’d disagree).
Only problem with a float of just the retail division is that with the possible exception of the cable tv and mobile services, it’s going to go down the gurgler over the next decade or so. Every phone company in the world is scared to death of voice-over-IP, and incumbent carriers like Telstra stand to lose 90% of their telephony revenues.
>More interestingly, the government led by Tim’s UK namesake renationalised Railtrack, to widespread applause, a couple of years ago.
Some applause from left-wing columnists, sure, but in reality it’s been a disaster.
What price should Testra be nationalised at? Current market prices? Historical listing price?, or the price you suggested Telstra was worth at the time it was privatised? From memory, in the AFR, you suggested it was a lot more valuable than it turned out to be. Mind you, rather than engage in foreign adventures etc. Telstra could have paid the money back to shareholders. Huge governance failure on the part of the majority shareholder.
I’m in favour of current market price as the basis for nationalisation. There’s no reason to impose capital losses on shareholders or to give them a free handout.
I agree that there was a governance failure on the part of the majority shareholder. Even before the first partial privatisation, I was arguing that partial privatisation is the worst of all possible worlds. The government was pretty scathing of this argument at the time, but they seem to have come around now.
JQ, instead of just stating Telstra should be renationalized with no supporting arguments (the Evatt link in your post contains nothing of substance), why don’t you instead do a detailed analysis of the competitiveness of Testra’s various business units and show how the public will so drastrically lose out by having such fine businesses in private hands?
That would at least make me feel like I am getting something for my contribution to your $250,000 salary.
Dogz, instead of silly personal attacks (about which you’ve been warned previously) why don’t you read my numerous publications and submissions on the subject, which are accessible on my website.
To respond, since the issue has been raised, my work on topics like Telstra is done in my free time. The work I’m doing for my Federation Fellowship is reported here.
Current market price? A windfall for some who sought to profit from the misguided nationalisation exercise in the first place. They don’t get much sympathy from me. There was no good faith there, just a gravy train. But if some form of payment is thought to be necessary for window-dressing, I would issue ex-shareholders with a bond of equivalent face value, paying, say, 2% and maturing in 150 years. The Govt. would then offer to buy the bonds at market rates – which given the low interest rate would be a healthy discount.
JQ, it wasn’t a personal attack. It was a statement of fact: if you performed such analysis I would feel like I was getting better value for my money.
I read the Evatt article you pointed to in your post. There was nothing of substance there. Certainly nothing that discussed the competitiveness of any of Telstra’s businesses. Rather than force me to trawl through the rest of your writings on the subject, can you point me to a paper in which you have analysed Telstra’s various businesses to determine their market-competitiveness and value to the public upon renationalization?
For some, the state or commonwealth selling assets or enterprises; concieved, built and managed publicly is a credo absolutum. For Dogz and others similarly captured by dogma that will not concede the point that there are some activities that benefit us all that are best owned in sovereignty and not privately. Communications, water, air-transport infrastructure, and roads. Any toll system is a financial clamp on that artery of commerce.
Funnily enough the majority of citizens of this commonwealth do not want Telstra sold so why not live with it. Telstra’s inefficiencies are a minor price to pay compared to the tyranny of business oligopolies or monopolie.
The pseudo privitisation of air services infrastructure such as airports, air-traffic control has been succesful at providing impetus for the development of those facilities but at the cost of monopoly firms with unfettered market power at selective locations. Problem with that approach is that the rest of the country has been dumped out of the system and the community cost is that with exhorbitant landing charges at Sydney airport for example the operating cost cannot be spread over a larger cutomer base (such as is required to to provide wide bodied transport jets) in smaller and regional markets that wish to travel to Sydney, therefore air transport services to very small markets exit the industry and are not replaced. So community after regional community loose a reliable air transport link and regional and rural councils are left with expensive airport assets and no users. We remove an air traffic control service that provides 24/7 services to most areas in the country and accept the risk that once you leave specific air corridors, it is effectively look out for your self, hardly a triumph for public good!
As a rural dweller I have seen absolutely no benefits from the privitisation of telecommunications services, my calls cost more, my internet bandwith and speed is sub-standard, my mobile phone only works with specific designated locations and platform changes such as 3G changes only offer further disruption and costs. I liked the system that no matter where I went in this Country that some form of telecommunications system such as a basic phone line was available to all but those who were literally the back of beyond. I liked it so much I did not mind paying but we as a community benefited even if it only reduced risk, that is worth paying for. I am all for re-mutualising telecommunications, airports, roads and water systems, sooner the better.
Dogz, if you’d asked politely the first time, I’d have been happy to help.
To all readers, please bear in mind that you’re getting this blog free of charge. If you don’t think the service is adequate, I’m happy to give you a full refund.
Scott Campbell, if only leftwing columnists supported renationalisation, presumably the Conservatives would be on a winner promising to restore private ownership. Have they done so?
Renationalise Telstra? What crap!
With the state of the current network, a govt owned telecommunications provider would leave Australia well behind the rest of the world, well more so than we currently are.
A fully privatised telecommunications industry with effective regulation is the only way to go.
Dogz, if you’d asked politely the first time, I’d have been happy to help.
Uhuh. Since you’re the one advocating renationalization of Telstra, the onus is on you to demonstrate why the public will benefit. In the meantime I’ll draw the most obvious conclusion from your failure to point us to any relevant analysis: you don’t have any.
Such a conclusion is also supported by the facts: Telstra gets its clock cleaned in every market in which it does not have monopoly power.
“if only leftwing columnists supported renationalisation, presumably the Conservatives would be on a winner promising to restore private ownership. ”
Since Railtrack shareholders were given the shaft last time, who would buy shares this go-around? The public in Britain has certainly NOT benefitted from the nationalization of Railtrack. In fact, they’ve taken quite a bath.
I was about to state what TomN already did. I can only add a description of the price of change, with the metaphor of repeatedly bending the lid of a tin back and forth. This eventually makes things snap, through metal fatigue.
Now, I know the perils of argument from analogy. Here I am using two of the three legitimate uses I know of. It’s a metaphor, for illustration – not reasoning, but communication. And, it’s a counterexample to an argument presented in a too general form (as JQ presented it). When an argument is very broad, one can legitimately try it on for size in other areas than the intended subject area, and counterexamples there refute the original general argument, thus showing that you can’t rely on it even in the original subject matter.
“Next cab off the rank, in my view, should be airports.”
IMHO the argument is not ‘privatisation’ vs ‘nationalisation’ but rather under which conditions one form of ownership is more suitable than another. These conditions may differ across countries.
In my submission to the 1995 Senate Select Committee on Aircraft Noise in Sydney (published), I gave reasons (conditions) under which I would not recommend privatisation (non-trivial externalities which cannot be internalised). My argument is based on the theory of incomplete markets (general equilibrium theory) and empirical evidence. IMO, Kingsford Smith Airport was not suitable for privatisation on these grounds. However, I did not argue for all airports to be publicly owned. A blanket pro or anti-privatisation ‘position’ is inappropriate. For example, Australia has geographically large privately owned land areas. It is conceivable to have a private airport, used by the public for domestic aviation – say tourism to the outback – on such a private landholding because the externalities (air, noise, water pollution) are internalised by the landowner and the risk of an accident on approach or departure over the private land seems suitable for private insurance. Moreover there are no taxation implications for purely domestic air traffic.
The terms ‘privatisation’ and ‘nationalisation’ are, in a sense, unfortunate because, from a micro-economic perspective, public ownership is often involved in both organisational forms. The distinguishing feature is the voting mechanism. Under the ‘private public ownership’ (publicly listed companies) the rule is ‘one dollar one vote’ and under national public ownership the rule is ‘one head one vote’ (for citizens). There are accountability issues with both form. However, in the more recent past the ‘private public ownership’ model has thrown up particularly severe accountability problems.
Dogz, I’m sick of dealing with your continued rudeness. You’re barred for a week. Any attempt to evade this will result in a permanent ban. If you choose to come back after that, please avoid any personal comment directed at me or other commenters.
I remind everyone that I’m doing this for free and I have better things to do with my time than to deal with people abusing me or demanding I do their research for them.
The convenience of it all. When educated types want policy to be based on a bit more nuance that what the average person in a marginal seat thinks when given 1/4 of the facts through the conduit of a murdoch bogroll, the Blairettes accuse them of being out-of-touch, latte (insert cliche)s.
However when most people aren’t so keen on something like privatisation because they can’t see the logic in merely selling off assets so that a political party can spend the proceeds in a few bribes and pork barrel jobs, they are ‘economically illiterate’ masses who should be ignored or forced to accept their medicine.
I’ll give you an industry- Melbourne’s public transport. It got privatised, its been pumped full of public money regardless like an anorexic having B12 injections, and still, it’s (**John’s not keen on bad language**)ing attrocious.
At least if it’s in public hands we have the direct ability, via the ballot box, to demand the boss’s head on a plate…
Dogz de-barked at last. Long overdue.
In theory, anyway. In NSW it’s in public hands, but I think everyone knows there’s no point voting against Labor because of it. The Liberals would want to privatise it, and make it worse. Everyone, public and pollies alike, understands this, so nothing improves.
The privatisation of the airports has been very poor in terms of evading development controls and the resultant problems that have been created to make a dollar.
The comments about the nationalisation of British Rail ignore the rundown of that facility during the years of privatisation – not to mention the accidents and problems. The renationalisation occurred because of serious problems in that very important transport system.
The problem with privatisations is that it ties everything up in red tape and nobody has responsibility for fixing it. It is one of reasons that privatisation has not been popular. Not every body wants to spend all their time calling call centres and hanging on for half an hour or more just to be told to ring another number and try again. Repeat and talk to a machine etc. Privatisation often transfer publics benefits to private shareholders whilst the society as a whole is left less efficient. Telstra may not be the most efficient organisation but at least we can complain to a pollie and get action if we need to.
The religion of Privatisation may soon be exposed for the cult it is.
Good call on Dogz – his demand to get his money’s worth was quite astounding.
John – okay, you don’t have to deal with Dogz for a week. So, can I politely ask you the same question he did, namely “can you point me to a paper in which you have analysed Telstra’s various businesses to determine their market-competitiveness and value to the public upon renationalization?” After all, it is a valid question and has some bearing on your above assertions. I understand that you may be busy, so a simple link or reference is more than adequate – no need to go writing War and Peace. Thanks.
“The problem with privatisations is that it ties everything up in red tape and nobody has responsibility for fixing it.”
Um, Jill, I think that qualifies as an own-goal. The major cause of bungled privatisation comes from government-imposed over-regulation of newly-privatised industries – mostly imposed as a sop to the large number of partially reconstructed socialists who love the idea of plodding, monolithic old SOEs dominating the economic landscapes of economies, and can’t stand the thought of their national champions being sold off. Trouble is, the end result is the worst of both worlds. A classic example is the privatised LA power companies, who were forbidden to raise energy prices, despite the fact that the cost of production became much higher than the government-imposed sale price. Result; multi-billion dollar power company debt, no investment in the grid and thus widespread blackouts. So you’re right, red tape is generally the problem with failed privatisations.
“multi-billion dollar power company debt, no investment in the grid and thus widespread blackouts.”
Not exactly. Grid underinvestment (and underutilisation of existing infrastructure) was a deliberate choice, as the power companies realised that they had a great chance to make a killing in the market by deliberately restricting supply, and a friendly regulatory body under Bush Jnr who wouldn’t give them more than a slap over the wrist for doing so. Hence the blackouts – far more a function of under- than over-regulation.
Massive power company debts were being created simultaneously, but mostly only for Enron, and last I checked there had been a couple of guys sent to the slammer as a result. Not much to do with privatisation at all really.
To clarify – the municipalities who had to buy the power from Enron etc did make big losses, but only because the suppliers were artificially inflating the price by restricting supply. (I was living there at the time.)
For the record I’m not fazed by telstra…
Renationalise James Waterton! Then strip the parts and do something useful with them. Amalgamate Dogz and Tim Bliar and sell the result to Fox television.
Brown-nose Blair in case he becomes editor of the Bulletin.
I demand to see evidence that Waterton has a functioning mind, rather than a cliche-machine. I demand substance!
Since you ask politely, James, I’m happy to point to this list. Perhaps the paper most directly relevant to your query is this one from Agenda in 1998. Although the opportunity has passed, I’d also point to my suggestion in March 2000, to sell off the Internet businesses “while the bubble lasts” here.
Andrew – okay, maybe I should make my own clarification. Actually, I’ll just point you to an Economist article – http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=478833 – (sorry, having trouble embedding the link) which neatly and comprehensively analyses the issue. I don’t think the giant power utilities who lost their shirts big-time can be termed “municipalities”, incidentally. As for blaming it all on Bush (nasty man wouldn’t regulate!) – you do realise the whole thing was largely a state responsibility and the federal government barely has anything to do with such matters? Also, the problem was born, festered and started turning malignant during Clinton’s presidency. Must be his fault! But seriously, the damage that energy crisis wrought on Gray Davis’s governorship led to his downfall at the recall election. Pretty disingenous political point scoring by attempting to lay it at the feet of the new President, wouldn’t you say? (Not that Bush isn’t able to bungle things – he is a bungler par excellence. But this one obviously wasn’t down to him) Slipping Enron in there was a nice touch, too – tweaking all the left-wing gripes, well done – however to say “massive power company debts” had “not much to do with privatisation” is verifiably false. My original point stands; the LA energy crisis was caused by a bungled privatisation that imposed a ridiculous, though politically expedient, regulatory framework on the industry – and the responsibility for that lies at the feet of the state administration running California in the mid-90s.
John – much appreciated. Thank you; I shall read the Agenda piece shortly.
Thanks also to Paul Kelly. Blatant displays of risible stupidity, like that we just saw from him, cheer me up no end.
“To all readers, please bear in mind that you’re getting this blog free of charge. If you don’t think the service is adequate, I’m happy to give you a full refund.”
I am happy for you to keep my ‘subscription fees’, Prof Q.
And as I am feeling generous today, I’ll even cover Dogz’ refund as well. 😉
James, maybe we can meet partway on this:
“the LA energy crisis was caused by a bungled privatisation that imposed a ridiculous, though politically expedient, regulatory framework on the industry – and the responsibility for that lies at the feet of the state administration running California in the mid-90s.”
I won’t disagree that the LA power degregulation was a massive screwup that invited the problem, and that “not much to do with deregulation” was a poor choice of phrase. However deregulation was far from the whole story; to quote the official report of that well-known leftist hotbed, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission: “…many trading strategies employed by Enron and other companies violated the anti-gaming provisions…” So I’m not just “slipping Enron in” for the hell of it, since they were in the thick of things. (The FERC report dates from 2003 – the article you linked was written at the time of the crisis itself, and much information emerged subsequently, so I can’t agree with your description of it as comprehensive.)
The deregulation was certainly a screwup, but the power companies didn’t have to break the law. I suspect we’d part company on what a better course of action would have been – I’d say it should never have been deregulated in the first place, since it was because of the deregulation that the market manipulation became possible, and little social good was achieved by it.
It should never have been regulated in the first place, and the partial deregulation only creates perverse incentives for the misadventure that you mention. I never said private companies aren’t willing to exploit such loopholes and take advantage of bad legislating. Therein lies the root cause.
From my discussions with long standing public servants it would appear that PPP suffer from lack of proper govt management from the inception stage to execution – this is their opinion, not mine. Private companies are bewildered by the almost daily chopping and changing of the goal posts by Govt bodies – it is hard to meet performance guidelines if the client is not sure what they are.
“If you did nationalise cable conduits then in my view they should not in fact be nationalised but rather ownership passed to local councils.”
That is a brilliant idea.
Regional communities need to attract high value knowledge workers, and I can tell you that those workers dream of telecommuting from attractive locations far away from giant traffic jams like Sydney. The only thing stopping this happy marriage is the availability of fast reliable broadband. Its crazy that this wonderful outcome is entirely dependent on the indifferent whims of Telstra executives. If local councils owned the infrastructure at least some of them could move to quickly rectify this situation.
maybe the best thing to nationalize or unprivatize is the rail assets in the north of WA (kimberly) region. As we’ve seen in recent court cases, the Big Miners (Rio and BHP) have a stranglehold on these important peces of infastructure, hence limiting the ability of junior miners to get up and started.
Whilst BHP may have paid a substantial majority of the asset (with the rest provided by Tax payer subsidies), the national interest is for as many mines to produce, not for a single company to monopolize the entire region, starving the juniors until they collapse and are then swallowed up.
Its even more interesting to consider the conflict the federal govt. has with regards to the 30% of the future fund that will be parked in BHP and hence the governments desire for the strangehold on rail infastructure in the northwest to continue – hence limiting supply and keeping prices artificially high!
“With the state of the current network, a govt owned telecommunications provider would leave Australia well behind the rest of the world, well more so than we currently are.”
The problem is that the current state of the network is a result of the said privatisation
Prior to the breakup, under the control of the PMG, Australia had one of the best telecommunications systems in the world. Currently I don’t know where it stands but it is probably much lower. It is hard to say however as most of the world telcoes have been either privatised or “de-monopolised” and have probably spiralled down in much the same way as Australia.
The PMG’s department, and later Telecom Australia were service driven enterprises. Now before you ROFL service driven does NOT mean Customer service. It refers to the technical quality of the service. To the fact that from “ear to ear” the quality of the service was the driving force behind the organisation.
It is probable that this emphasis left the customer feeling a little out of control and there was an attempt in the latter years of Telecom to move more towards Customer service.
With part privatisation and the emergence of Telstra the organisation became more a profit driven enterprise, which is of course, the natural result of privatisation. The primary concern is return to the shareholders and if this means the reduction of expenditure on maintenance etc. then so be it.
I have been in the Telecommunications industry since I was 16 and in the 40 years since I have seen some dramatic changes.
I am proud to say that I have worked for the PMG’s Dept. I am proud to say that I have worked for Telecom Australia, and I am proud to say that I have never worked for Telstra. I am hoping that I will reach retirement before the whole network disintegrates because there is little left of it that will stand for much longer. This includes that part of the network that has been almost totally abandoned by Telstra, the cabling within private premises.
In 1966 I commenced a traineeship that lasted for 5 years. A traineeship that provided both theoretical and practical training. In 2006, after the completion of 5 DAYS of training one can be registered as a communications cabler.
The current situation provides major difficulties in attending to “service faults” as there are so many links in the chain, Each with little or no understanding of the technology or requirements of the adjacent link. It is extremely common to have the situation bounced between Telstra, telco, ISP, premises cabler and IT serviceman and back to the beginning.
When I first began one organisation was responsible to completely maintain the service from mouth to ear and back again. I know an egg can’t be unscrambled but I do look back with a certain amount of nostalgia
The red tape which has proliferated with privatisations may have been the result of government but it can also be a failure of the market. It can also be inexperienced public servants who lack corporate memory due to the churn factor within the modern public service.
The airports are a classic example where federal land is sold and remains federal but local authorities at the expense of ratepayers are left to provide the infrastructure to deal with traffic jams and other inefficiencies.
The belief that private is always better has been found wanting in terms of the wider society as private firms seek to service a narrow base. After all if the air traveller is unhappy there is no real opportunity to go elsewhere. The Airport share holders will be happy but it doesn’t have to be a happy experience for those who aren’t shareholders, especially if the fees to use the airport are exorbitant which is possible under a natural monopoly.
Good posts Lindsay , Jill Rush, ‘still working it out’, Armaniac and SJ.
Telstra belongs to us and has been paid for, many times over through our taxes and hefty phone bills.
To sell this asset, when the order of 75% of the public have consistently opposed the sale is morally no better than theft.
Don’t anyone give me any bulldust about how the Government has obtained a ‘mandate’ to sell. If the public had not been deceived in regard to Telstra and so many other issues the Liberals would have lost the 2004 elections by a massive landslide.
The belief that nationalized is always better is also wanting. It makes little sense to say that private firms seek to serve a narrow base. Why would anyone interested in making money do that? Of course an air traveller can go elsewhere, they can take another airline, another airport or another mode of travel.
Let’s think about this logically. Airport shareholders are interested in what? Making money, right? And how do they do that? Well, thay attract lots of customers. And how do they get lots of customers? Well, they provide a service/product that people want. Unhappy customers go elsewhere, leaving shareholders with less what? Less business and less money.
This frantic clutching of nationalization as a panacea for everything, even in the face of previous disasters, such as Railtrack, is silly. Nationalization is NOT always the answer. Sometimes it IS ok for shareholders to make money.
If you own the only international airport in a city of four million people you don’t have to work to attract customers. Customers cannot go elsewhere.