My piece in yesterday’s Fin (over the fold) was about the failure of Telstra (or, more fairly, telecommunications policy) to give us even late-20th century standards of broadband service. Meanwhile Joshua Gans looks at how Telstra talks to regulators when it’s the underdog.
Make Telstra public again
Following Australian telecommunications policy is like watching one of those horror movies where the protagonist insists on going down the staircase into the cellar, even though everyone in the audience can see that disaster awaits. Or perhaps it more like Groundhog Day, where the hero relives the same bad day over and over again. Looking at the current crisis over Telstra, it’s striking that, despite the massive technological changes of the past decade, the same policy issues are being debated and the same mistakes are made.
The most salient example is the protracted sage of Telstra’s proposed privatisation. It was obvious to anyone who cared to look that the idea of partial privatisation, commenced by the Howard government in 1997 (in emulation of previous privatisations on this model undertaken by Labor) was a recipe for conflicts of interest, and for the creation of a regulatory nightmare.
As Treasurer Peter Costello said in early 2000, barely two years after the T1 sale,
If Telstra is going to be caught in a position where it is half privately owned and half government-owned, I don’t think that is going to be a good outcome. Telstra should all be either privately owned, or if people really think that nationalisation and government ownership is necessary they ought to have the courage of their convictions and nationalise it.
More than six years later, Telstra is still half-private and half-public and it seems inevitable that, even if a sale goes ahead, a substantial share of Telstra will remain in public ownership through the future fund. Certainly, there is nothing in the record of regulatory policy to suggest that full privatisation would work well. So Costello’s own logic would suggest that he should be advocating renationalisation.
But the debate over Telstra’s ownership is of secondary importance compared to the more fundamental problem that telecommunications policy has failed to meet the needs of telecommunications consumers or Australia as a nation. We lagged badly in the initial provision and take-up of broadband, and now seem certain to fall even further behind as other countries move to high-speed Internet technologies based on optical fibre all the way to the home.
More than ten years and several communications ministers ago, it was evident that poorly designed telecommunications policy was promoting investment decisions driven by considerations of corporate and regulatory strategy, yielding outcomes that were not in the national interest. The biggest example then was the race between Telstra and Optus to roll out duplicate hybrid-fibre coax cable networks, covering half the country, leaving everyone else to wait a decade or more for decent broadband access.
As I wrote at the time
the future of communications, and most notably the rapidly developing Internet, lies in digital networks based on optical fibre … the more progressive telecommunications companies in the United States are already discarding HFC in favor of building optical fibre ‘up to the curb’’ … The resources being wasted in providing duplicate analog networks could have made Australia a world leader in the development of digital telecommunications networks.’ (Pay TV’s wasted billions, Australian Financial Review, January 8,1996).
A decade later, with Japan and other countries already delivering fibre to the home, allowing high-speed Internet traffic for both uploads and downloads, Telstra finally came up with a proposal to roll fibre out, but only as far as local nodes. But, this was a mere bargaining chip in Telstra’s corporate regulatory strategy, to be withdrawn when the regulator did not give the right outcome.
So, apparently, we are supposed to rely on the second-class option of stretching ADSL technology to its limits, in the hope (contradicted by Telstra’s own statements on the subject) that the copper-wire network will stand up to the strain.
It’s time for the government to face up to its responsibilities for our national infrastructure. Telstra should be brought back into public ownership, and required to construct telecommunications infrastructure to meet national needs.
The first step in this process is that the government should take its role as majority owner seriously, and appoint a board and CEO committed to acting in the national interest. Peripheral assets like the Foxtel stake should be sold off. And the Future Fund could be used to buy out shareholders who would prefer a company more focused on short-term profits.
Australian telecommunications policy has been stuck in the same endless loop for a decade or more. If the horror movie we’ve seen so far is to have a happy ending, we need to turn around and head back upstairs.
John Quiggin 
Terje wrote: A more reasonably hypothesis is that when managers are employed by the public sector they are often required to meet political objectives that compromise their ability to make good economic decisions on behalf of a public company.
This distinction is rubbish.
Both publicly owned and privately owned entities are required to make ‘profits’ in the broadest sense of the word. When managers of publicly owned entities are prevailed upon to meet ‘political’ objectives, this means they are being asked to provide services, the benefits of which can’t be easily quantified by normal ‘bottom line’ accounting measures of profitablity. This doesn’t meen that the services being provided to the community are any less real than the narrowly defined fincancilal definition of profitability.
The real distinction between Telstra being privately owned and Telstra being publicly owned is that in the former case they will be accountable, at best, to one out of nine Australians who own shares, whilst in the latter case they will be accountable to nine out of nine Australians. So naturally, there is a tendency for the one out of nine Austrtalians to want to gouge as much wealth as they can from the other eight of nine who don’t own shares, and conversely, to shift as much of the costs of their decsions as possible away from them onto those eight out of nine Australians who don’t own shares.
The reason why this is not be in the public interest should be self-evident.
In fact, according to the Newspoll of August 2002, in spite of what we would have seemed to have been their self interest, more than half of Telsttra shareholders opposed full privatisation.
JS
Publicly owned monopolies are “self regulating monopolies�. They can do and charge anything they want. They only serve the interests of the elite political ruling class. They only account to that class with cash and they are not accountable to “nine out of nine Australians�.
Look at Sydneywater. It has had $4 billion siphoned out of it in the last 10 years and now Sydney is running out of water and the funds to maintain supply. New connection charges this year are going from $3500 to $9,300 per property in some areas, just to subsidise more political follies by the Iemma government. Iemma also has his hands in the pockets of the electricity companies, undoubtedly there will be a short there soon as well.
“So naturally, there is a tendency for the three out of nine Austrtalians to want to gouge as much wealth as they can from the other six of nine who aren’t the elite political ruling class�.
Econwit,
Your post fails to address the point of my last post. The point was to dispute Terje’s fallacious distinction between the profits that a private corporation is required to make and the profits, in a broader sense, that a publicly owned utility is required to make. His argument that managers, who are required to make only monetary profits, are inherently better managers than those, who are required to sacrifice some of those monetary profits in order to achieve some greater community good, doesn’t stand up IMO.
—
If Sydney Water were a private monopoly, all the money would be going into the pockets of its owners, who would be at best a small proportion of this population. At worst it would be owned by overseas investors. Whatever the case the public, who are now the owners of Sydney would have even less say in regard to how much is charged and to what use the money raised should be put.
In a democracy it is possible for the owners of the public owned utiity to decide how much should be charged for the service and what should be done with the money raised.
Of course the Iemma Labor government is very far from being acceptably open, accountable and democratic. However the solution is to fix this problem rather than to simply privatise Sydney Water.
James,
Get this into your head. If the water companies were not government owned, they would not be a monopoly. Secondly – governments can never be “…acceptably open, accountable and democratic..” They can get close, but the ones that do are not ones that run monopolies. Get rid of those two misconceptions of yours and you will understand much.
Andrew,
Water is a natural monopoly. It may be possible to have ‘competion’ amongst those who send us the bills for the supply of water, but any thinking person should be able to see that this duplication, even though not nearly as wasteful as outright duplication of the infrastructure to supply water, is, nevertheless, a waste and adds needlessly to the cost that the consumer has to bear and to the overall complexity in his/her life.
—
Your view that Governments are inherently inefficient and corrupt and corporations are inherently efficient and virtuous (including the US telco NatWest which gave a AU$95 million golden parachute to Trujillo a few years back before cancelling a promised divedind to tens of thousnads of shareholders) is just too preposterous to warrant any further response on my part.
James,
The only part of the water supply that could, conceivably, be a “natural monopoly” is the bit of piping that takes the water to our homes. The rest of it is not. There can be multiple sources of supply, from the macro scale such as a big dam to local – perhaps small scale desalination plants. The “natural monopoly” bit is just plain silly.
The strawman you have built in your second paragraph also does not correspond to reality. Of course corporations will be corrupt – just as there will always be corruption in government. Sometimes they feed off each other. Neither is the point of my argument – one you have seemingly wilfully ignored for thread after thread. The simple problem is informational – governments will never have as good information as the sum of the information available to the participants in a market. It is simply not possible. As a result their actions will always be late and either over or under estimate what needs to be done – even if they do the right thing.
If you can show how a government can correctly judge a market outcome and improve on it I would be fascinated.
Andrew,
Your argument that we can arrive at better decisions using price signals alone than we can arrive at from also using our collective intelligence is utter twaddle and belies everyday experience.
Your disdain for the ability of governments to make intelligent decisions in fact follows from your low regard for the intelligence of fellow citizens which you revealingly expressed on another thread where you excused the Government rushing through it’s full privatisation legislation in September last year without subjecting it to proper scrutiny by the Senate:
So, Andrew, what kind of idiots would the public have to be if they can’t be made to see what is so obvious to you and to such politicians?
The last thing anyone would wish is for elections to be held and for these fools to actually excercise their judgement of the incumbent Government based on all of its record, including the privatisation of Telstra, the privatisation of Medibank Private, “Work Choices”, “Welfare to Work”, “Strengthening Medicare”, rather than just its pre-election bribery.
“better managers than those, who are required to sacrifice some of those monetary profits in order to achieve some greater community good, doesn’t stand up IMO.�
If the retained earnings are stolen by socialists (as is happening with Sydney water), then the managers are not allowed to conduct necessary maintenance and capital expenditures to ensure the business is viable and can maintain the supply of its product in the long term.
Individual competencies of the manger might be the same, but if they are in a straight jacket how can they manage effectively? They can’t that is why in IMHumbleO the best model (for natural monopolies) is a REGULATED private monopoly. You have to disconnect the snout of government from the till and make it transparent.
“If Sydney Water were a private monopoly, all the money would be going into the pockets of its owners,�
Not if it is a REGULATED private monopoly. Part of its profits would be retained to maintain and grow the business to meet future demand; Part of its profits would be taxed at mandated rates. And “regulators impose price controls on the firm that usually are highly correlated with production costs to keep profits at a moderate level�.
See my post August 19, 446pm above and
http://spot.colorado.edu/~kaplan/econ2010/section10/section10-main.html
Econwit,
One obvious fallacy in privatisation is that it adds needless extra complexity. If everyone in the community needs a service, for example, water or telecommunications, why shouldn’t the whole community, through their elected government assume responsibility for doing so?
Why add the complexity of bringing in a third party (or second party if we don’t consider the governed and those governing to be separate) and then stuff around trying to regulate that third party into delivering decent service in the first place and not overcharging in the second place, as we now seem to be witnessing with Telstra?
I have never been an an apologist for the avowedly ‘Labor’ government of Iemma in NSW and, before that, of Carr, and would not dispute for a moment that that those governments fall a long way short of being acceptably democratic and accountable, but at least they are ultimately answerable, under the constitution, to the public of NSW, and the problems can be fixed when the public of NSW becomes sufficiently motivated and active in their political affairs. This would not be nearly as easy if ownership of the water infrastructure were to be handed across to private investors.
Apologies for what might have been sloppy english in the above post. After I wrote the post, I realised that I wasn’t completely sure of the meaning of the word ‘fallacy’, so I checked my Oxford Australian Dictionary, and it told me that ‘fallacy’ means:
Just possibly the third meaning might be correct, but assuming that it is not, my first sentence should, instead, have read:
James said;
“If everyone in the community needs a service, for example, water or telecommunications, why shouldn’t the whole community, through their elected government assume responsibility for doing so?�
IMHO based on my extensive experience in trying to obtain a semblance of service from any of the three tiers of government, it would be safe to conclude that they can not run anything very well and when they try to run everything they collapse:
http://www.freeessays.cc/db/26/hce238.shtml
Aren’t we “witnessing with Telstra?� the effective 51% government control. Isn’t there a correlation in the proportion of dysfunction in Telstra that is a reflection of that control?
“One obvious problem with� government interference is that it adds an inert layer that could “vitiate� services.
It is difficult for me to comprehend a logic that says, removing the government from an equation will add “needless extra complexity.�
Our views seem to be diametrically opposed and it might be prudent if we agreed to disagree.
Econwit,
Your anecdotal account of the failure of to “obtain a semblance of service from any of the three tiers of government” is of no interest to me.
I have acknowledged that many governments are seriously flawed, mostly because they are beholden to powerful vested private interests. As I said the solution is not to hand across the ownership and control of all assets to unelected competely unaccountable private corporations, rather it is for citizens to make democracy work properly so that governments and the utilities that they own on our behalf are made properly accountable once more.
The dysfunction in Telstra is not due to it being 51% owned by Government, rather it is due to it being politically obliged to raise the share value lost by private investors since half of Telstra was privatised.
If Telstra was fully owned by the public the benefit to all of rolling out a high speed fibre optic network would have been obvious to all and it would have got on with the job long ago. Instead, they find themselves unwilling to proceed because they deem that the return to the invstment of Investors who comprise only one out of nine Australians is inusufficient. So the plans to build the network were scrapped.
In your preferred model of a regulated monopoly, a supposedly ‘inert’ Government layer seems to be necessary anyway.
From where I stand, it seems to me that the private managers of Telstra and the shareholders to whom they say they are beholden are now the ‘inert’ layer which is preventing the rolling out the new services that Australians desperately need. They have added nothing to the value of Telstra except an ability to transfer wealth out of the pockets of Australian telecommunications users and the Telstra workforce into the pockets of sharehlders, after, of course, taking their own very considerable cut, with Trujillo being paid AU$8.9million this year, including a $1.5 bonus for delivering a ‘Strategic Report’ that cost Telstra a staggering $54 million in consultants fees. In a properly run telco operated to serve the Australian public,Trujillo and Burgess would be lucky to be employed in a call centre.
Econwit,
One thing I have learnt from frequent discussions with James is that he is immune to any reasoning on the subject of government. A good example is above “Your argument that we can arrive at better decisions using price signals alone than we can arrive at from also using our collective intelligence is utter twaddle and belies everyday experience.”
Hayek and many others have found, as I argued above, that the problem is not a lack of intelligence, but informational deficits. It is simply not possible for anyone to know everything that is going on in a market involving many thousands of constantly moving points of information.
James will blithely move over this and insist that, contrary to the many complaints he will make about government, that a government can overcome these because they have to face elections every 3 to 4 years.
The profound lack of logic or even consistency in this position means that making an argument against him, no matter how logical or consistent with his own opinions it is, is pointless. I continue with it because I enjoy it, not because I have any confidence it will succeed.
“Hayek and many others have found, as I argued above, that the problem is not a lack of intelligence, but informational deficits. It is simply not possible for anyone to know everything that is going on in a market involving many thousands of constantly moving points of information.”
V. Hayek didn’t find anything, theoretically or empirically.
V. Hayek hypothesised, in the lose sense of the word, and he promoted his beliefs. You have to go to Mount and Reiter (previously referenced) to get theoretical conditions under which v. Hayek’s beliefs can be examined. Once there, at Mount and Reiter, the link to the research program in analytical economics, going back to Adam Smith and resulting in the G.E. work on incomplete markets of the mid-1980s (working paper form) to mid-1990s, journal and book publications. is possible. The conclusion is that v. Hayek hasn’t got anything to offer now. This is not to diminish the importance of some of his work at the time, in the 1940s. We are now in 2006 and not in the 1940s.
In the path to discovering that v. Hayek hasn’t got anything to offer, you will come across intellectual heavyweights, such as Professor Kenneth Arrow. However, in order to get there, you may have to give up your idea that everything can be explained in ‘plain English’.
Hypothesis: Private sector managers manage Telstra ‘better’ than public sector managers.
My observations are:
1. Yes, if ‘managing better’ is defined in terms of the personal wealth of the CEO and his preferred management team, including Bain & Co. (Possibly some non-monetary benefits for some management team members in the form of being able to exhibit raw power in public)
2. No, if ‘managing better’ is defined in terms of technological advancement, operational efficiency, employment and share prices in the local economy.
PS: Bigpond advertises and promotes personal virus and firewall protection, which turns out to be provided by McAffee.
Question to IT experts: Would $54 million be enough to develop such programs locally?
Andrew, everyone is entitled to their opinion including me so I will persevere with him.
James,
“Your anecdotal account of the failure of to ‘obtain a semblance of service from any of the three tiers of government’ is of no interest to me.�
It is of no interest to them either, because they account to nobody. The public sector is not accountable to our elected representatives, nor is it accountable to the public they are suppose to serve. The public sector is a ‘self regulating monopoly’* and they only account to themselves.
On the one hand you are arguing governments “are ultimately answerable, under the constitution, to the public�, but on the other “they are beholden to powerful vested private interests.� This contradiction is a manifestation of the fact that the public sector is beholden to no one.
You “acknowledged that many governments are seriously flawed� Yet you profess it is better for them to run businesses. This defies logic, why would you want an entity that is “seriously flawed� to run an essential service?
“transfer wealth out of the pockets of Australian telecommunications users and the Telstra workforce into the pockets of shareholders�
Telstra’s share price decline dictates there has been an evaporation of wealth as opposed to a “transfer of wealth� for most of the stake holders, especially the Australian public which includes users and the Telstra workforce, as they have the largest 51% shareholding.
*The worst kind of monopoly.
Ernestine,
As you know, I am not an economist and am not a mathematician. Has what Hayek said been falsified or just made mathematically robust in the references given?
.
Econwit,
I am not saying he is not welcome to his position, just try to understand the argument you will encounter. To expand on the example given – James will criticise the Queensland government for the water problems in that state. Fair enough, it is a problem caused by government action (or inaction). He will not then take the next logical leap, however, and ask if there is possibly a better way to run water than through a politician’s office. He will then (for some odd reason) try to pitch this as a reason not to have free markets in water in Queensland, but take it as a good reason to give the politicians more power.
The nice little quote of mine he keeps parading around is a further good example. I was careful to say what they were doing was right in their opinion. If they know it will not be popular or the good effects will take some time that is what politicians will do. They ill not do it at the end of a term. To imagine differently is, to me at least, not to understand the beast that is a democratic government. It is another reason why they should have less, not more, power.
Andrew, IMO, your question is going too far from the topic of the thread. I’ll post my reply on the Week-end thread.
.
More on the fight against communism by J Howard;
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/australia-must-fight-in-global-struggle-for-freedom/2006/10/03/1159641328095.html
It is intersting reading.
“To quote George Orwell: One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”
Econwit,
You don’t suppose that George Orwell would derive any satisfaction by having his words used by the likes of Australia’s own “man of steel”?
I wonder what Orwell’s thoughts would be in regard to Howard and his Government allowing the payment of $300 million of bribes to Saddam’s regime shortly before that point in time when he would have had us all believe that war against that very same regime was unavoidable such was the threat that it posed to the rest of the world?
Do you think Orwell would have bought the explanations of Howard and Downer which would have effectively rated them as the most incompetent political leaders in all the history of the modern western democracies, or do you think that Orwell more likely would have thought, as most informed observers believe, that Howard and Downer knew exactly what was going on, all along?
In regard to Ho Chi Minh, I don’t think most opponents of the Vietnam war had any great delusions in Ho Chi Minh. They were, as I remain to this day, disgusted at the wanton slaughter and destruction that saw more bombs dropped on the Indo-China peninsula than were dropped in the whole Second World War. Most of the people who fought on the same side as Ho Chi Minh were decent ordinary people who wanted a just and democratic society. The war started when the artificially created Southern reigime cancelled the elections promised in 1956 and began jailing and persecuting the independence fighters who had fought against France. Even Australia’s Foreign Minister Casey conceded that the Viet Minh would have easily won the elections in the South as well as in the North.
Whilst the Communist Government that came to power in 1975 was a long way short of ideal, it was, nevethless vastly more humane than the murderous corrupt dictatorship that it replaced. Had not so many people died, had not so much of that country’s resources been destroyed, and had the war not been so prolonged, who is to say the the Government of Vietnam that emerged would not have been far more democratic than the one that did and that the people of Vietnam would not have been far more prosperous today?
James,
I am not a supporter of Howard and a lot of the things he does leaves me shaking my head, but you can’t honestly put him in the same category as Downer.
Howards view of history is similar to mine on the subject of a “struggle fought by individuals on behalf of the individual spirit�.
For you to imply the war started because someone “cancelled the elections promised in 1956 and began jailing and persecuting the independence fighters� is a simplistic white washing of the events. It might of been the catalyst for the war, but the context was the height of the cold war and the Vietnamese war was to halt or slow Communist expansion from the north.
The “independence fightersâ€? were vicious communists lead by the Soviet/Chinese backed Ho Chi Minh, whose philosophy was “that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed peoples and the workers of the Whole world.”
For you to state “most of the people who fought on the same side as Ho Chi Minh were decent ordinary people who wanted a just and democratic society� is far from the truth. These are the same people who murdered hundreds of thousands deemed counter-revolutionary landlords during the Land Reform Campaign. Their idea and yours of “a just and democratic society� is strange.
Anyway it is all history now
Econwit,
Glad to know that you are not an uncritical suporter of Howard.
I think you need to read some history books about the Vietnam War.
One incontrovertible fact that is ignored by rigth wing cold war historians is that the Soviet Union and China twisted the arms of Ho Chi Minh in order to force him to accept, in 1954, the rotten deal that divided the country in two. Thus they were made to give back at the negotiatiing table what the Viet Minh soldiers had gained on the battle field at great cost. This is a fact that doesn’t easily fit into the right wing cold war view that the deomcratic west faced a united monolitic communist enemy.
I would be interested to see the source of your claim that the Vietnamese Communista “murdered hundreds of thousands deemed counter-revolutionary landlords during the Land Reform Campaign”.
As an aside, it was very disappointing to see the ALP siding with the carpetbaggers on the Telstra board over the Cousins appointment, when the consistent party position would have been to point out that this merely highlighted the imperative of maintaining government control/ownership. Short-term political point-scoring triumphed over maintaining a sound long-term policy poisition, once again. No wonder this crowd can never get elected.
*sigh*
Media Release
Community group calls for boycott of T3 and
judicial inquiry into Telstra mismanagement
The community group Citizens Against Selling Telstra called for a boycott of the $8 billion sale of Telstra shares.
“The removal of 5,000 pay phones this year, the planned elimination of 12,000 more jobs from Telstra’s already threadbare workforce, Telstra’s defiance of the ACCC in scrapping its plans to build the fibre optic network desperately needed by the Australian public – all in the name of looking after the interests of its shareholders – couldn’t make the picture more clear,” said James Sinnamon, convenor of CAST, “Any money that shareholders can hope to gain after Sol Trujillo, the merchant bankers and the stockbrokers have taken their cut, will be paid for with the lost livelihoods of fellow Australians, by monopolistic profiteering and by the elimination of services that had been provided to the Australian public as a matter of course.”
Mr Sinnamon asked intending share buyers to first carefully consider Telstra CEO Trujillo’s record as CEO of the American telco US West until 2000. He pointed out, “Traditional customers were neglected to such an extent that Qwest, which bought out US West in 2000 had to pay $36 million to 244,000 customers as a settlement for the poor service they suffered in those years. Whilst such business practices may have helped lift the profitability on paper of US West whilst Trujillo was at the helm, Qwest suffered a catastrophic decline in value with its share priced dropping from over $50 to $1.37 in the two years after Trujillo’s departure1.
“Trujillo was paid AU$95 million as his retirement settlement by Qwest. How either party to this deal could justify a payment of such unprecedented and staggering magnitude, especially when when dividends promised to tens of thousands of US West shareholders were subsequently cancelled, defies the imagination.
“If his past record is anything to go by, Sol Trujillo will be putting himself first, and shareholders, customers and Telstra’s workforce a distant last.”
Mr Sinnamon called upon the Australian public to spurn the T3 share offer and demand of the Federal that it scrap the planned sale.
Also, he said, the Australian public, the rightful owners of Telstra, who have already paid for Telstra many times over, must be given answers as to how so much of the value of their asset has been destroyed in recent years and how Sol Trujillo, given his record, was appointed as CEO to Telstra in the first place. A full judicial inquiry into the mismangement of Telstra over the past ten years must be called.
“If the Government fails to stop the sale, then it must be held fully to account at the 2007 elections by the Australian public for the harm that will ensue,” Mr Sinnamon said.
Footnotes
1. See “Telstra’s New Boss” in Dissent Magazine, No. 18, Spring 2005.
James,
Considering the overt government manipulation of the board and the appointment of a CEO you (and many others) clearly have a problem with, perhaps this should be viewed as a good reason to actually sell the government shares.
James said,
“you need to read some history books�
OK it seems you are right on that point, maybe you caught me out I’m not sure, because history has a bad habit of being distorted when it is written.
My source was Wikipedia , so it could be invalid, although it is open to challenge.
The piece paints him as a typical murderous communist revolutionary and it neglects to mention anything about your “incontrovertible fact� in the section under ‘Independence Movement’. (maybe you can put something in about it).
Under the heading ‘Becoming President’ is the section regarding the Land Reform Campaign note 12 has a link to the war dead.
Anyway this is off the topic.
Sorry forgot the link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh#_note-10
Econwit,
Thanks.
You will have noticed that the wikipedia article says: “Estimates varyEstimates vary between 800 imprisoned or killed [11] and 200,000[12] executed.”
To get this into perspective around 500,000 Indonesiaon Communist Party sympathisers were murderd in the Indonesian coup of 1965 and the overall death toll due to American bombs and bullets in Vietnam was somewhere over 2,000,000 from my imperfect memory. This is no excuse for mass murder if that is what happened in North Vietnem, but I have yet to be conviced that the masacres occurred the way you have described them. I suspect that the actual figure is much closer to the lower figure and that figures closer to the higher end of the range come from sources such as the CIA.
My main source was “The Vietnam Wars” writen in 1991 by Marilyn Young. I don’t recall this repression to which you refer being mentioned.
Andrew,
Why do you presume that because the Labor Party condemned Howard’s appointment of Geoffrey Cousins to the Telstra board, that I also do? I don’t know what motivated John Howard to do this, but it is ridiculous for Labor to ciritcise Howard for attempting to assert more Government authority over Telstra.
I refer you to cs‘s short post above, with which I completely agree.
James,
I withdraw on the board appointment. Do you think the CEO should have been someone else?
Andrew,
Sol Tujillo, who we are told, has the best interests of Telstra’s shareholders at heart, cancelled in June 2000 $270 million of dividends that were to be paid out to the shareholders of US West. He did this by moving the date on which the dividends were to be paid back from 30 June until 14 July 2000 after which US West was no longer in existence.
On 30 June 2000 Trujillo negotiated with Qwest, the company which was buying out US West, a payout of an astronomical payout of AU$95 million (US$70 million) which was not disclosed to US West shareholders at the time. As mentioned above, see SBS Dateline story of 20 September.
In spite of Qwest’s generous payment to Trujillo, it suffered a catastophic decline in value from over $50 to under $2 in two years (see graph linked to from here).
Why is this man running Australia’s National telecommunications carrier instead of being behind bars?
Ummmmm, maybe because the board, appointed by the government and doubtless at least discussed with them, appointed him?
Why again do you want only the government to have a say in how this is run?
Andrew,
Your last non-argument has been made and responded to many times before. I won’t be dignifying it with any further response.
I somehow doubt that the fact that the Howard Government bears ultimate responsibility for having appointed Trujillo will stop you from voting for it again in 2007.
James,
I would be interested to see where you had responded to my non-argument. Funny, I can’t seem to remember where.
One of the factors leading to me at least preferencing the Libs next time, if indeed I do, is the fact that they are getting rid of the ability to appoint his successor.
Andrew wrote: “One of the factors leading to me at least preferencing the Libs next time, if indeed I do, is the fact that they are getting rid of the ability to appoint his successor.”
Who could possibly object?
Handing across any remaining controls of a corporation which provides a service upon which we all depend from a Government which is under the constitution accountable to all Australians to one which is accountable to at most one in nine (and falling) Australians.
James,
I do not depend on Telstra – I have a mobile through someone else and I use VoIP for most of the rest. I paid my last bill to Telstra more than a year ago.
The only reason most Australians continue to pay bills to Telstra is that it used to be a government enforced monopoly – another thing we can thank them for getting rid of.
On the ownership thing – I would suggest you have a look at the holdings of shares by the super funds. We all continue to own Telstra, just in another way.
Have a good time trying to convince people of your case, but it is one that is already lost. The ALP, on regaining government will not re-nationalise Telstra. It is sold and gone – and we are all better for it, even if we do not realise it.
Andrew Reynolds wrote: “I do not depend on Telstra – I have a mobile through someone else and I use VoIP for most of the rest. I paid my last bill to Telstra more than a year ago.”
So, why would you care a toss for millions of Australians who don’t have access to decent broadband telecommunications? Why would you care for those Australians who have been forced to rely on a copper network which has been deliberately run down in order to keep dividends flowing to shareholders? Why would you care for those who can’t afford the premium Next G service? Why would you care for may Australians who may be left with no telephone servces whatsover as a result of the removal of pay phones? Why would you care for the 12,000 Australians who are to lose their livelihoods over the next five years in order to improve Telstra’s bottom line?
Andrew Reynolds wrote: “Have a good time trying to convince people of your case, …”
As you well now, I never have had any trouble convincing people of my case. An emphatic majority has consistently opposed privatisation whilst only a tiny minory has ever supported it.
Andrew Reynolds wrote: “… but it is one that is already lost.”
Why should it have been lost, given that we are supposedly a democracy in which ordinary people ultimately make the decsions?
Don’t you think that, in a democracy we should be entitled to reverse decisions if they have been shown to be detrimental to our interests? Can’t you see that if a decision made can’t be reversed, particularly one which has been as consistently opposed by such an emphatic majoirty of the public as this one has, that a basic principle of democracy has been violated?
Andrew Reynolds wrote: “The ALP, on regaining government will not re-nationalise Telstra. …”
You make little secret that this is the sort of ‘democracy’ suits you well:
Neither major political party representing the views of at least 66% of Australians who oppose privatisation.
Hundreds of ordinary Australians who have taken the trouble to argue their heartfelt opposition to privatisation known in the various enquiries, newspaper letters, letters to politicians, talkback shows and public meetings ignored.
Politicians, who, like you, know better than the public what’s good for them, but are too gutless to withstand public scrutiny of what they do.
Andrew Reynolds wrote: “It is sold and gone – and we are all better for it, even if we do not realise it.”
Only time will tell if John Howard will, once again, manage to avoid being held to account in 2007 for the harm he has inflicted on the Australian Telecommunications network as he succeeded in doing 2004.
Your posts have shown abundantly well through these many months that the political and economic philosophies that you espouse are deeply antithetical to democracy in any meaningful sense and have no place for compassion for fellow human beings either in this or in future generations.
James,
You have never really grasped the concept of representative democracy, have you?
The parties we have elected to govern us have made a decision and acted on that decision. You disagree with that decision, as is your perfect right. The argument is now pointless, but you are free to continue it – but it will probably be in my absence. Others interested, if any, may continue. At the next election the Greens may even carry your position as a policy, but they have about as much chance of implementing that policy as Bob Brown has of becoming PM.
If you want to suggest citizen initiated referenda, please, go ahead – I would be happy to engage, but this one is an argument that you have lost and (IMHO) it is pointless to continue. Have a nice day.
Andrew,
How has teh majority opposed to all the major privatisations that have occures since the late 1980’s been ‘represented’ by the two major parties?
James,
We voted them in. That is the meaning of representative democracy. We vote for representatives to legislate and take executive decisions on our behalf.
This is probably a silly question, but why is “the” often written as “teh” on some blogs. While it may sometimes be a typing mistake, it seems to occur too often for this to always be the case!!!
Damian – it is almost invariably a typo.
Andrew,
I would suggest to you that your lecture about “representative democracy”, that you have made to me on countless previous occasions somewhat misses the points I made in my previous post.
You are welcome to address them, but on the other hand I am perfectly happy for this discussion to continue in your absence.
James,
You claim that my beliefs are “…deeply antithetical to democracy…”. What nonsense. An understanding of the way our democracy works (a realist view) does not mean that I agree fully with the decisions that come out of it.
The populist nonsense that lead to the Medicare was just silly, but I recognize that this is not going to be overturned in the near future, so I do not go on about it. I was suggesting you put Telstra into that category and move on.
I would be very happy to live in a country that had well educated people fully participating in the democratic process, with daily discussion of all the important issues, after which any issues that needed to have a full plebiscite would be voted on. I believe that this would, in the long run, lead to a truly free nation with a very small government and most powers and functions being where they should be – with the people individually, rather than with some over powerful clique of political parties jealously pulling powers into themselves and doing dirty back room deals.
This is not going to happen in the near future either, so I do not go on about that. In the mean time, I cheer instances where the government gives up some, small, measures of control over our lives and will fight those, larger, areas where they either continue to have too much say in my life or, worse, try to have more.
If you believe that this is “…deeply antithetical to democracy…” all I can say is that, IMHO, you are just flat wrong and to truly hold this view you must have some really odd ideas of what democracy is (again, IMHO). Try some reading and thinking James – John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” would be a good place to start, followed by Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”. A belief in individual freedoms and individual rights is not incompatible with a belief that we are all equal – it is inseparable from it.
Andrew,
I invited you to respond to the specific points I made in my earlier post, not to restate your philosophical resentment of governments running and operating businesses and services on behalf of the people they govern.
Regarding Hayek, when I find a copy of his book, I will read it, but in the meantime, until you can quote me anything which Hayek wrote which sheds new light on this issue, I will accept Ernestine Gross’s judgement on Hayek.
As much as you maintain that the world will be a better, freer and more democratic place with every possible service in private, rather than government hands, the fact remains: While the Australian public have been consistently and overwhelmingly opposed to privatisation in all the polls of which I am aware going back more than a decade, this has not been reflected in government policy.
Other examples of the expressed wishes of the public being flagrantly violated include:
It should be obvious that something is be fundamentally wrong with our system of democracy if governments go on selling the assets of the people without their consent and so very often against explicit promises not to do so.
It is self-evident that your support of all this shows that you are in practice opposed to democracy in any meaningful sense, and I would add that I find the way the way that you are now gloating triumphantly over the difficulty that the Australian public may have in reversing a decision that they never consented to be offensive.
You intend to go on voting for political leaders who behave so corruptly and undemocratically because it suits your personal circumstances.
James,
Unless we are to break the law or cast an invalid vote, we all must go on voting for one or the other – both of which you have identified as behaving in a corrupt and undemocratic manner.
I will vote for the party that I believe will give the greater choice to the Australian people. If I have the opportunity, I will probably give my first preference not to the Liberals but to the LDP and then, as I have done at every election in which I have voted I will look at the platforms of the major parties and arrive at a decision.
If you find it offensive to be realistic, fine – but I suggest you will remain offended and angry your entire life. What a waste that would be.
I would accept Ernestine’s judgment on someone only after looking at where she was arguing from – and getting an answer from her on topics where she is clearly uncomfortable. Thus far, I have not without her taking refuge in technical sophistry.
I would also suggest having a chat with Jason Soon over at catallaxy on Hayek vs. some of the people Ernestine brings up – I place more weight on his opinion as he is typically happy to engage in robust debate about it.
Andrew,
Once again. I see no responses to the substance of my previous posts – only red herrings, misrepresentation and condescension.
As you should well know I have strenuously argued that people should vote and should also make a choice, using the preferential voting system, for the Labor Party and against the Howard Government as deeply flawed and inadequate as many of us may find the Labor Party.
Whilst I have strenuously argued that the choice is important, it doesn’t mean that we have no right to loudly object when Labor, under the influence of the business lobby and the media, diminishes or removes entirely the choices on offer to Australian electors : privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank, the State owned insurance offices and Banks, public transport, electricity generation, repeal of the GST legislation, cancellation of the US Australia Free Trade Agreement, having a nationally owned Telecommunications utility as you have gloated about above, removal of the Private Health care rebate, etc, etc.
Why do you deliberately misrepresent my views?
As I have shown, it suits you to have the majority of the Australian public either misinformed enough or apathetic enough to go on re-electing a Government as manifestly dishonest, incompetent, and ill-intentioned as this one. When you condescendingly invite people like myself to not “remain angry and offended for (my) entire life”, what you are really asking for is that we also become apathetic, so that John Howard can be re-elected in 2007 and go on misgoverning this country in order to to suit your own personal circumstances.
James,
We have a representative democracy. If you do not like this fact – seek to change it by referendum. I, genuinely, wish you good luck. If, however, the results of opinion polls are to be regarded as definitive, there are many positions that would be contradictory that would have to be adopted – immigration policy, for example, would become a nightmare and, quite possibly, highly racist for at least a while, until the inherent stupidity of a racist position is worked out. The death penalty would also very likely be re-introduced despite it being plain that this serves little or no purpose.
I do, regularly protest when this government, or the alternative government, adopts positions I regard as incorrect. I would never seek to stop you doing likewise. It would be flat out wrong of me to do so. I do not believe I have misrepresented your views, but if you can show me where I will apologize and withdraw.
James – this government does not “suit me” – it is far too centralist, conservative and is doing several things to which I have objected loudly – both on blogs and elsewhere. I just believe it is doing a better job than the other lot, particularly under Mark Latham, would have done. At the last election, a majority of Australians agreed with me. Maybe next time the result will be different.
Andrew, you wrote: We have a representative democracy. If you do not like this fact – seek to change it by referendum.
I might just try to do that one day, but how does this argument address the points that I raised here and here?
If something is rotten and corrupt in our system of government then we have a right and duty to raise our voices as loudly as possible in order to rectify it.
In 1966 the Liberals won government in a landslide on the basis of a “red menace” scare campaign and misinformation about the cause of the Vietnam War. Do you really think that those Australians who understood what was going on at the time and wanted to stop the slaughter and destruction would have taken any heed of your lectures about “representative democracy”?
I very much doubt it. Instead, they got on with the job of educating the public about what was going on and loudly protesting against the war on every possible occasion. It is widely acknowledged that, as a consequence, the Australian Government was constrained not to commit more than 10,000 troops on any one time and even then to keep them away from the bloodiest fighting.
So, clearly on that occasion the “representatives” of the people were not able to do completely as they wished.
In fact, the same happened only a few months ago with attempts to privatise the Snowy Hydro scheme. There were loud protests and when independent MP Andren threatened to raise the legality of privatisation in Federal Parliament the Government caved in. I somehow doubt if Andren and the anti-privatisation protestors would paid any heed to your talk of “representative democracy” either.
Clearly the argument that you are attempting to make, that is, that we have no right or ability to change the minds of elected Governments is nonsense and a diversion from the issues at hand.
Andrew, you wrote:James – this government does not ‘suit me’- it is far too centralist, conservative and is doing several things to which I have objected loudly – both on blogs and elsewhere. Neverheless it is taking this society much further in the direction that you would like to see it go than a Labor Government would.
Andrew, you wrote: I just believe it is doing a better job than the other lot, particularly under Mark Latham, would have done. At the last election, a majority of Australians agreed with me.
Andrew, they were deceived as I have pointed out on many other occasions. The deceit included
In any case, if the best our system of democracy has to offer is a Prime Minister who is either incompetent beyond belief or else knowingly allowed $300 million in bribed to be paid to Saddam Husseins’s regime, doesn’t that concern you?