From: Jeffrey Morgan [jeffmorgan@aussiemail.com.au] Sent: Thursday, 28 August 2003 10:12 AM To: ECITA, Committee (SEN) Subject: Bronwyn McDonald Bronwyn McDonald PO Box 201 Tin Can Bay 4580 QLD 0408353377 cannoneagle2001@yahoo.com 24.8.03 Dear Sir or Madam, the first thing I would like to bring up is that I have emailed this letter to you. Isn’t that ironic? I am using a Telstra phone line to send this letter to you. Not only that but, there was no postal address in your advert. Every Australian has access to a stamp and a post office. Not all Australian’s have access to email facilities to send you their response. If, I was cynical I’d say that this was done on purpose, to lock out the voices of those who don’t have the email facilities - which is a huge portion of Australian’s and thus make your job easier. However, what I would say that has happened was; that you are so used to using electronic communications, that a postal address was forgotten. For the simple reason that email addresses are becoming more and more common, while postal addresses are no longer being the instant inclusion, that they once were. I am not educated well. I do not have a list of initials after my name. I am neither famous nor well known. I am a no body, a little battler. Please excuse my poor grammar and spelling. I am dyslexic and this is not easy for me to write. Please hear my voice. These are my reasons as to why Telstra should not be sold or privatized. A month ago a back-hoe cut the phone lines to my small town. Let me tell you the effects this had on our tiny town. All telephone land lines shut down. All mobile phone services shut down. There was no access to ambulances by phone. There was no access to police by phone. There was no access to the fire trucks by phone. All ATM machines shut down. The one and only bank we have shut down. The post office could not accept payment of bills. Tourists and locals could not book plane flights or book a seat on a bus or a train. The libraries Internet shut down. We could not even borrow a book. Our local doctor has a video link-up to specialists and would not have been able to discuss a critically ill patient online, at that time. The one and only newsagent couldn’t accept our lotto forms, for the 9 million dollar draw. The supermarket ( the one and only supermarket) had no ATM facilities and also could not order in new stock. It took all day to repair, until after business had shut about 6.30 at night and, we had only limited services the next day. Had I lived in a city? I could have traveled to another suburb and it probably wouldn’t have effected me that much. However, I live 50 k’s from the nearest town and I own a wreck of a car, it is not that easy. We are a society who runs on phone lines. A communication company has a huge responsibility to this society. One back-hoe knocked this small town over, this is how dependent we are on communications. The sale of Telstra into private hands will mean a transfer of control over communications in our society from: a government based one, to private one. I am talking about private control here …power over communications in Australian society. This power over communications infiltrates our daily lives in many known ways today, as the back-hoe incident has shown. In the future many new ways of communicating, in our daily lives, will become available that, are not even invented yet. Let me tell you about what happened while I was working at Australia Post. Downsizing meant I am now unemployed and no longer with Australia Post. While I worked for Australia Post we received memos that, the government was quietly looking into privatizing Australia Post in the 1980’s. Two companies said they would be interested in buying it. I saw their proposals. TNT wanted to cut all uneconomical deliveries in rural and inland Australia and only do the three major coastal runs by road: Melbourne to Sydney, Sydney to Brisbane and one limited service to Perth. They wanted to shut down hundreds of tiny post offices. Not one or two - hundreds. They also wanted to cut out all postal deliveries to homes and businesses. They planned to set up huge private mail box centers (not in individual towns either) where customers traveled to pick up their own mail. TNT wanted to contract out the mail sorting, into these private boxes, and only focus on the road mail deliveries by truck. Mail delivery would be charged as a phone call is today, by distance. The further the distance - the higher the cost. There would be no fixed rate for a letter. Or, customers could pay for the services they now have with an account. If you couldn’t afford to pay - there was no service. At the moment Australia Post delivers mail - twice a week - to three properties out west. Australia Post covers the costs to travel that 500 kilometers, just to deliver to three stations. TNT wanted the property owners to travel to a town (not the nearest town) to collect their own mail as, it was seen as uneconomical. A privatized Telsta will think with the same mentality, the bottom line is the dollar not, the customer. Perhaps I’ll write that again, a privatized Telsta will think with the same mentality as TNT. Services in uneconomical areas would not be viewed as a necessity for the people in that area but, as a financial figure on a balance sheet and thus cut out or charged accordingly for - economical reasons, no matter what the financial ability is of the people, in these areas, or what that they can afford to pay. Selling Telstra will generate a lot of money for the government however, any human being with any intelligence knows if, you have a chicken and you receive money from selling it’s eggs, to keep financially viable, one does not sell the chicken. You people on the committee hold a huge responsibility in your hands. The governments decision to sell Telstra will have long reaching, future effects. Decisions on things that are not even invented yet. Technology will use the hardware infrastructure that we, the people paid for in the future in ways we can not begin to imagine. A video recorder was an item that in 1981 cost $1500 and I remember thinking they were astounding. Today a house without a video recorder is a rarity and no one blinks when they see one. If a home does not have one - that is a rarity now. Today, private homes do have computers and the Internet. In the 1980’s this was not so. The 1980’s were twenty years ago, not two hundred. Five years ago not many people had mobile phones. Now they are common as mud. One year ago not many people in Australia had mobile phones that could send video messages, now we do. Technology is growing so rapidly. If, five years ago I told you that you’d be able to send videos on your mobile phone would you have believed me? None of us can see into the future but we can see the past. Did you see the Internet coming twenty years ago? Did you see it ten years ago? Did you see it five years ago? Did you see online banking, shopping or operations being done with video link up? How can you see where communications, the information highway and technology are going in the future? How can we sell something that may be a monstrous mistake in the future but, we can not undo it? Technology is so rapid, how many other future inventions using the Telstras infrastructure and hardware will be invented, that we have no idea about now? Inventions that may become as taken for granted as a mobile phone and the video recorder is today. How can we sell Telstra when we can not see how far technology and the information highway will take us? If we lease the Telstra infrastructure and not sell it outright, it will always be ours - Australians. If we lease out the Telstra infrastructure and not sell it outright, it will generate competition, a privatized monopoly will not do that. Once we sell Telstra’s infrastructure it is gone. While we lease it, it is not. When we lease Telstra, we control who gets the lease and if they charge incorrect fees or disadvantage Australian people, by not improving services - they do not have their lease renewed. Leasing Telstra will give us a choice. Selling it removes that choice. If we lease the Telstra’s infrastructure, we still own it. If a new technology becomes available we keep control of the hardware needed to run it and can charge accordingly. Which equals - money. How can we sell the chicken when we don’t even know what eggs there will be in the future? Let us look at what is happening with communications today. Today, children who submit handwritten work for marking by their teacher, lose marks if their work is presented in a handwritten format and not printed out on a computer. A child without a computer is disadvantaged over those who do have a computer at home, no matter how good the content of the assignment is. Children with access to the Internet are able to access information that, a child who only has access to books can not. Schools with access to the Internet can watch live video link ups from people (regarding educational matters,) who can not actually visit their school. Schools have strict budgets. A monopolized, privatized Telstra could charge what they like and influence school budgets on what services they can provide to children, especially in remote areas. Parents have budgets. If they can’t afford Internet, they don’t have it. A privatized Telstra will also have a budget. When it comes down to who has what - it comes down to money. Let us look at country areas and communications. 1. Broadband services went to cities first, not rural areas. 2. Mobile phone signals went to cities first not, rural areas. 3. Many people in remote areas have to pay $5,000 for a satellite phone because there is no phone signal. Technology is growing so rapidly but country areas do not receive this new technology first because of economics. Money. In 1979, in Monto in Queensland, I made a phone call from a phone box that used a wind up phone, with no keypad on it and, an operator ran the local phone exchange from her home. The delays were shocking and the lines were poor. Did you note the date I mentioned? It was 1979, not 1929. Monto was not a city but a small country town. The word small, is the key word here. No city person in 1979, wound up a phone and talked to a local woman, waiting to be put through to the number they wished to be connected too. Residents in Monto did though. Why? Because country areas come last when it involves new communication and technology because of the financial costs involved, when covering huge distances. Cities get access to things first not country areas because of economics. Money. Private companies look only at money and profit. Money… Today, country areas have poor mobile phone signals and must pay for the dearer phone, a CDMA mobile phone. Monto may have mobile phones but not the signal to use them. Why? The cost of installing mobile phone towers, over huge distances, means country areas come last on the list for quality service. Which comes down to - money. Internet is available to country areas but not many have access to broadband technology. That means that Internet connections are slow which, equates to expensive, and the connections drop out constantly. This comes down too - money. Let us look at education. If I family or school does not have access to broadband technology for education, because they can not afford it and a wealthy child or school does have access to the broadband education facilities, which of them will benefit? Who will receive a better education? Those who can afford it. Again it comes down to - money. The wealthy will become more educated and the poor will not become educated and as such, stay just that - poor and uneducated. This will make a new class in society. Those who do not have access to technology and are kept as third class citizens. They will have more children who will stay poor and uneducated - because they too will have little or no - money. Economics will govern who gets what. We can see by the past that, cities got the goods first. We can see that those who can afford to pay - get the services they want. Hmm.. there it is again - money. I feel those who wish to sell Telstra are not looking towards the future with the average Australian persons best interests at heart… in the long term. It seems to me that they are looking at; the amount of money that will come available, when Telstra is sold. When that money is spent it is gone. It won’t be there in the future again. It is gone. By leasing Telstra there will be a regular income from the lease plus; the benefit of owning the infrastructure for future inventions and this means there will be an ongoing income. Over time that income might out do the amount that we will receive now and, it will keep coming indefinitely. A lump sum payment of Telstra will not do that. A lump sum looks attractive because it is a lot of - money. As for defense Paul Keating instigated the free Internet available in public libraries. Did you know in the report it states that there was one single phone line covering the top of Australia that could have been cut with an axe by an invading force and which; would then have knocked out all communications to the rest of Australia? An axe. This problem was rectified and now there are more lines in those areas to hopefully halt ‘that’ problem. The issue here is; without communications, a huge nation like Australia is vulnerable and this relates to the sale of Telstra. What Australian company, who is 100 per cent Australian owned and, will stay that way, can afford to buy Telstra? Look at who is interested in buying Telstra - other countries. A friendly nation’s company who buys Telstra today, may not be our friend in the future, whether that is in ten years or one hundred, (when we are long gone) but the effects of the sale of Telstra will remain. American phone companies may seem to be the answer, they are our allies, right? Let us look at the ‘global positioning satellites’ (GPS’s) that are owned by America and used by our defense force plus ordinary Australian’s at sea and on land, they are even in our cars. During the Gulf War, the American government shut down the (GPS) global position frequency that we, Australian’s used. We were instantly blind. Dependent on a service that instantly disappeared. I was on a yacht navigating through The Great Barrier Reef at that time. Did the American consider the safety of Australian’s dependent upon global positioning services during the Gulf War? No, they looked after America’s best interests. They blinded not only me but our nations navy. This happened again during the Iraq crisis but not to the same extent. Australia had learnt a valuable lesson. So had the rest of the world and now private satellites are being launched for ‘GPS’ services - at a cost, of course. Who would an American company look after when it comes to communications in a time of conflict if they buy Telstra? You or me? No. They would not. Let us say that an American company did buy Telstra. They are an allied country. That private American company should be safe to hold our countries communications in it’s hands shouldn’t it? Well, no. Private companies do not have control over who buys them out. Private companies have hostile take overs, that may not be in our best interest, in the future. A take over is done by the company who can afford the take over, no matter what nationality they are. This again relates to the highest bidder and they have - money. We need to look towards the future and even to issues like national defense when it comes to communications. We need to look further down the line (excuse the pun) to see just where the ownership of Australian communications could end up. As it is naive to believe that current countries, who are not hostile now, will always stay that way. We need to ask ‘who’ may be the owners of the ‘entire’ running of the ‘Australian communications’ in the far distant future, not tomorrow. If we look at Iraq, communications were the first thing attacked. Armies need communications in a time of hostilities. A government leased Telstra infrastructure would keep basic control over communications, such as the hardware and infrastructure which would be still be held in the hands of the Australian Government in a time of national crisis. If we sell it, we no longer have Government control and I do believe that if we wanted it? We would pay dearly for it. Economics counts whether it is in a time of peace or a time of war. It comes down to - money. Once Telstra is sold, there will be no more income from Telstra. No control over communications. Plus once the money from the sale of Telstra is gone, it is - gone. So is our control. I personally feel that this board is trapped. Telstra will be sold whether we, the people of Australia want it or not. John Howard will bring in a double dissolution and as such I truly feel that even your very committee may be a waste of time and money. I truly hope I am wrong. The next election will tell. I do feel that my writing to you is a waste of time. However, I am one of the people who will be effected. How could I not write? There are more poor people struggling in Australia today, than the wealthy ones and the wealthy make the decisions. Let me now take this letter to a personal level and let me tell you about myself and how I see, the economical effects that selling and not leasing Telstra will have on me. Today’s society is a user pays society. If you can not afford to pay - you do not get to use it. What is the bottom line? Money. I am the voice of the poor. We scream in silence, with no voice, and it seems no one listens when we speak. Let us look at our differences. You have a job - I do not. I can not afford to have the Internet connected to my home. Do you have access to the Internet? I could not afford to buy the newspaper that the advert for your senate meeting was in, it was given to me. I need education to get off this poverty wheel. I need cheap access to communications to increase my education. I need to be informed about what is happening in Australia because what is happening in Australia effects me, a little person - a no body and there are millions of people like ‘me’. My rent is $120 per week. I receive $366 per fortnight from the Government’s ‘Newstart’ allowance (to which I am so grateful to receive) and I receive $40 per week rental assistance. I live on the balance. To go on the Internet, I use the libraries free Internet access, for the one hour per week, I am allowed to use. I can not afford $59 needed for broadband Internet at home. I can not afford to have it connected. My computer is so old that it would not go on the Internet anyway. If Telstra is privatized, I can not see the free Internet at the library continuing because the government is subsidizing the Internet at the libraries at the moment. The new privatized Telstra is not going to do that. It is uneconomical. If they do they will charge libraries accordingly and so that facility will go. We have a local Internet café that charges $4.50 for 15 minutes of Internet time. So may be the poor can use those facilities? Are you paying $20 per hour for your Internet? Can I afford $4.50 for anything? No. $4.50 to me is a lot of money. $20 per hour for Internet is so far beyond me, I would no longer have access to the emails or Internet. I would be as blind as when I was sailing and the GPS went off. I have not spoken to my father in six months. I write once a week. That costs me one stamp, fifty cents as I can not afford the STD phone rates to speak to him on the phone. I hear “A privatized Telstra will mean more competition and cheaper STD rates.” Has any one on this committee taken a look at the rates of goods and services when a company is privatized? Ask the American’s how cheap and efficient their power supply is now that it has been privatized. Ah, but I digress… A new privatized Telstra will look at: making money, keeping it’s share holders happy and not the poor who can not afford the Internet and who, go to the library to use it for free. Without the free library Internet - you wouldn’t have heard from me. It would not have been because I did not want to write but because if there was a fee involved? I could not have a say. I could not pay. I have no - money. I remember Mr. Malcom Fraser saying how he liked it when sporting personalities were making headlines, he said, it stopped the average Australian looking at politics. I was shocked that he put that into words. However, that is what will happen if Telstra is privatized, little people like me who won’t be able to afford to access the information highway, will live in a void - a third world like area, when it comes to access to communications, a void about what is happening: in Australia, a void about what is happening in politics, education, health and it is all because of money. You have no idea how difficult is was for me to send this email because you do not live in my income world. However your decisions will impact my world. Why was it hard for me to do such a simple thing as send an email? I have no money. I will walk 2 kilometers to have this sent as I have no fuel for my car. I don’t drink or fritter my money - I just don’t have much to start with. Small things that cost more - effect me deeply. Okay, so an item goes up by one dollar, big deal who cares it is only a dollar? One dollar to me is a lot. Working people don’t notice price rises the same as people who have a fixed income. An item that goes up in price is raised for profit reasons. A privatized Telstra will focus on only on profit. I can not give them profit, however a wealthier person can and as such services will be aimed at that market- not at people like me. Can you honestly say to me that a privatized Telstra will think in a moral way, when it comes to poor people and their needs? Can you honestly promise me that a foreign owned country will even care if some: unemployed, uneducated woman, living in a remote and tiny town has the exact same services available to her as a city person, who is earning a good income has? It does not happen now - why will privatizing Telstra be any better? Lets go back too American electricity sales. A phone line is like water and power. Look at what has happened in America when they privatized water and power. They cut jobs, charged huge fees, that people in lower incomes can not afford and not only this; the top brass then rip off their customers and shot through with all the money. The company then collapses. Can you promise me that won’t happen if, we privatize Telstra? It is happening now, today overseas- what guarantees do you have to say it will not happen in the future, here in Australia, with a privatized Telstra? Greed is a human emotion. Privatizing Telstra means it becomes a company that is worth a fortune. Where ever there is a fortune, there is greed. At the moment a government owned Telstra is obligated to all Australians and has ‘the eye of government parties’ upon it. Government bodies who, have a say. No one has a say in a private company. A Pandora’s box of greed may fly open and we, the little battlers will pay for it. Not with our wallets but, by our lack of services. Judging by history, current and past, to privatize is to subject the poor to even more hardship. The sale of Telstra will boost the finances of the country for a second. A leased Telstra will boost the Australian economy for as long as it is leased. A leased Telstra keeps Australians in control of their communications and that is how it should be. How can I make a wealthy, educated person like your self, who spends money and lives a lifestyle so far removed from mine, see how the sale of Telstra will effect me? Truly I can not. For I am a no one. I am poor. I do not have a voice on the very committee you sit upon. I never have and I never will. That is why you hold such a huge responsibility - you hold the future of the poor in your hands. You hold the nations defense in your hands. You do have a voice. You do have power. You must fight the “quick fix - Band Aide” mentality towards the sale of Telstra. I pray you heard me. I hope that I may get a job and not care if a privatized Telstra raises it fees, because it will no longer effect me in the way it does now. I hope that if, nay!…when… Telstra is sold that, none of what I believe will happen - shall come about. It is a done deal, Telstra ‘will’ be privatized. It is a sad day for all poor Australians. Only time will tell. Yours Sincerely Bronwyn McDonald _____________________________________________________________ The best email provider on today's market, sign-up now for as low as $20.00 AUD per year! http://www.aussiemail.com.au