10 May 2007

Is the Chairman of the ACCC Graeme Samuel misleading the public?

Telstra consultant Henry Ergas has revealed the ACCC Chairman has attempted to re-write history in a bid to explain how the regulator blocked Telstra's attempt to invest $4.1 billion in a high speed fibre network.

The following letter from Mr Ergas was published in the Australian Financial Review (9/5/07):

"On Saturday 5 May 2007, ACCC Chairman Graeme Samuel, during an interview with Geraldine Doogue on ABC Radio National said, and then repeated, that Telstra had broken off its talks with the ACCC on the possible deployment of an FTTN network because the ACCC had insisted that Telstra make its FTTN proposals public.

I attended the meeting which ended those talks on Telstra’s behalf. As was clear at that meeting, the differences between Telstra and the ACCC had nothing to do with any ACCC request for public disclosure. Indeed, the issue of public disclosure was not raised by the ACCC at that meeting and did not form part of the discussions. This is quite simply because Telstra had emphasised from the outset that if its proposal was to proceed, it would file a public Undertaking with the ACCC detailing that proposal. As a result, there were no differences of view between Telstra and the ACCC as regards public disclosure. Rather, the fundamental difference was over whether users in the cities should help cover the losses arising from providing service in country areas, and if so, by how much.

It is disappointing that Mr Samuel has stated otherwise, as all of this would be well known to him."

Why does the ACCC Chairman feel the need to misrepresent the facts? How can the man whose job it is to uphold truthfulness and fairness in the business world put forward a very different interpretation of the talks?

What hope does Telstra have of being able to compete fairly when the man responsible for upholding fairness appears to be playing games and has his own agenda when dealing with Telstra?

Related article:

Blog: Media Matters - The “full Monty” versus the “real McCoy”

Top