[LINK] Friday funny a little early

[Adam Todd]

At 07:21 PM 4/08/2007, you wrote:
>At 12:18 PM 4/08/2007, steve jenkin wrote:
>>distinguish between Aus & the USA?
>
>Didn't you know? AUS is an acronym for A United State. ;-)

ROFL!  HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!

Oh gawd wish I'd had that one last night when I went out!

You are so funny!

>But yes, I did think it was a bit rich for him to be talking about 
>'foreign owners'. There are still quite a few of those of his own 
>company, although limited by the legislation.

Pffft, and how is this different?  Australia is made up of foreign 
people and now the Fed Government is taking away the lands from 
families in the North yet again.

They say history repeats every 200 years or so :)


>Here's a question for you. How does the govt intend to make Telstra 
>keep the CDMA network operating? Wasn't there a little thing called 
>a 'privatisation' not long ago? Is the threat that Howard/Coonan 
>will 'nationalise' the company? <sheesh>

Me?  Personally?  Ha!  No, be interesting to see others opinions on this.

I don't think they can.  Although the legislation relating to Telstra 
from an infrastructure requirement hasn't changed :)

And of course now being freed of Telstra as a major shareholder the 
Government can now put money into whatever infrastructure and 
whatever companies it desires.

As is currently seen with the Optus Broadband fiasco and Telstra 
taking the Minister to the Federal Court.

I guess when you loose your major Government shareholder, you have to 
expect to be treated as an outsider :)

Telstra enjoyed 15 years of funding from the Government coffers 
whilst other telcos suffered in being set up.

I'm surprised to be honest that no one tested the Constitutional 
requirement that Government not operate or be a majority shareholder 
of a competing commercial enterprise.

This was by the Government Printer shut down many years ago.  It was 
very cheap and more and more people were starting to use it at the 
expense of other suburban business printers.

Eventually it become a major political issue.