Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Birmingham for that question particularly, because I am drawn to a comment in today’s papers from John Durie, who was talking about this. He talked about the cost and what was being paid to Telstra. John Durie said:

Payment for Telstra assets was just compensation after previous governments failed to take the chance to restructure the industry before it was too late and the company was fully privatised.

If you are looking for scapegoats on the payout figure, try writing letters to John Howard, Nick Minchin and Peter Costello, because they were the bunnies who wanted to maximise their privatisation booty at the risk of subjecting the country to a dominant incumbent telco.