John Howard: Telstra is a big cake which you can eat and have!

Now listen here, don't listen to the popular myth: you can have your cake and eat it at the same time. After all, John Howard, liberator of the free world and defender of the common Aussie battler, is telling you so.

Telstra is a nice big cake. It makes money and yet is government owned... who would have thought? Sure they are fat and bloated, and run inefficently as they are a government owned company, but damn, they still know how to bake a nice cake.

The thing is, Johnny wants to sell the cake. Make Telstra a nice lean - low carb, low fat - yet extremely tasty cake. The problem with these cakes tho, is that they need to compete in the commerical market. And low fat cakes don't do so well. They have to compete, for starters. Now in "capitalism", a good corporation will go for the high profit margin "fat", not the lean, tender, low-profit meat - or in this case, areas which just don't make much money.

So Johnny wants Telstra to go private. Make them a lean killing cake - not your typical cake, but one of those futuristic cyborg cakes that really have a nice icing. The icing for Johnny is a nice fat lump sum. The problem is, he still wants to eat it. Sure the bush sucks when it comes to profit margins, yet he wants Telstra to be a nice, good, wholesome, wholemeal corporate citizen. But that's not how the world works. You want Telstra to strip down? Then you've got to deregulate it. Sure it may not play fair and not everyone will get a slice of it's telecommunications goodnes. But that's because they are poor, and they live in shitty areas which no one cares about, right?

Which brings us back to the old adage: you can't have your Telstra cake and eat it. Want to make sure Telstra plays fair? Well then you can't expect it to if it is private. It will become a nice little company that needs to make money above all else, just like its rivals. You can't expect a privatsed Telstra to abide by regulation... it's prime concern will become just how good its own icing is. Cakes are tasty Johnny, but you can't have it an eat it. Release Telstra, sure that's fine, but don't impose your own recipie on it - you can't have it both ways. No wonder the Amigos are pissing you off - they don''t want to play by your own fantasy rules, gee it must hurt.

Right now the cake hasn't risen properly. It's all flat and tasteless, yet Johnny still wants to sell it. And eat it. And make sure his cake isn't screwing anyone over. But corporate capitalism is about screwing someone over - whether it's your consumers or your competition.  So Johnny, what's it to be, let the cake roam free or make it sit in the overn while it goes stale?

 

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