Our competitors in the bid to build a high-speed broadband network for all Australians are becoming experts in distortion, distraction and dishonesty when it comes to the facts about Telstra. An ongoing favourite is that Telstra can simply do whatever we please because we are a large telecommunications company with unfettered powers.
This fairytale is just that – a nice, make-believe story dreamt up to support the anti-Telstra campaign. The truth is, Telstra is on one of the tightest regulatory leashes of any company in Australia.
Industry-specific legislation, most aimed solely at Telstra, envelopes most parts of the organisation, affecting almost everything we do. And the list of laws and regulations has actually increased since the introduction of competition.
As at July 1997 there were 10 pieces of Commonwealth legislation determining the regulation of the telecommunications industry, but by October 2005 there were 19.
Over the same period the number of subordinate regulatory instruments, both legislative and self-regulatory, went from ten to 329.
The number of pages of codes, specifications, legislation, directions, standards, declarations, determinations and notices went from 1,602 pages in 1997 to 10,013 pages in 2005.
A significant part of Telstra’s compliance costs is in providing reports. These too have mounted dramatically over the period of ‘deregulation’ despite periodic rhetoric to reduce red tape.
We produce 206 weekly reports, 77 fortnightly reports, 120 monthly reports, 56 quarterly reports, six half-yearly reports, 17 annual reports, and two that required every three years. That is a grand total of 485 reports totalling an estimated 162,654 pages.
Even though the industry has been through a period of ‘deregulation’, new and more onerous regulatory requirements have been introduced, such as the Local Presence Plan, Priority Assistance, the Network Reliability Framework, the Regulatory Accounting Framework and more.
If the ACCC simply has a "reason to believe" that Telstra has breached competition regulation, the ACCC can issue a competition notice. Telstra faces fines of up to $3 million a day for the first month, and a million a day thereafter, from the time of the notice until a case is proved in court.
The last time the ACCC issued a competition notice against Telstra we sought a judicial review, and the Federal Court found that Telstra had been denied procedural fairness and natural justice. Among other things, the terms of the competition notice were different to an earlier consultation notice.
During the case, the ACCC actually argued that under the relevant section of the Trade Practices Act, it was not obligated to afford Telstra natural justice.
Not only did the ACCC attempt to use the law to bludgeon Telstra, the downside of losing the case for them was only a little embarrassment, and for us, it could have been hundreds of millions of dollars.
So when you hear comments from people with a vested interest in creating an anti-Telstra environment - like Michael Egan’s recent statement that Telstra believes’…that it has a divine right to do whatever it wants.” – you will see if for what it is. A fairytale.