Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/230352

Title

Customer service guaranteed?

Author(s)

Given, Jock

Abstract

This article is about laws and markets for communications services. It is also about promises, politicians and politics. Through the 1980s and early 1990s, many of the fundamental points of difference in the economic policies of Australia's major political parties disappeared. In particular, institutions like QANTAS, the Commonwealth Bank and the Federal Airports Corporation, were privatised by a government of the Labor Party, whose economic and social aspirations had until then been founded on public ownership of enterprises in key sectors of the economy. By the 1996 federal election, one of the few major enterprises left in wholly government hands was the biggest of them all - Telstra, the successor to Telecom Australia, and the Post-Master General's Department. For a time, even it seemed vulnerable under the Labor Government. Prime Minister Keating had hinted that the ownership of Telstra might not matter 'of itself', but these musings did not find their way into the party's policy platform. Labor went to the 1996 election promising to keep Telstra fully in public hands, while the Liberal/National Coalition promised privatisation. Polls consistently demonstrated majority public opposition to the Coalition's plans to sell Telstra and there were several elements incorporated into its policy to soften the impact of the sale and to help convince voters and senators to support the necessary legislation if the Coalition won office: only one third would be sold; there would be tight limits on foreign ownership; the company would remain headquartered in Australia and the chairperson of its board and a majority of its directors would be Australian citizens. Further, the Coalition promised to introduce a 'Customer Service Guarantee'.

Publication type

Journal article

Source

UNSW Law Journal, Vol. 21, no. 2 (1998), pp. 623-631

Publication year

1998

FOR Code(s)

1801 Law

Keyword(s)

Australian political parties;  Communications services;  Law;  Media services;  Privatisation

Publisher

University of New South Wales

ISSN

0313-0096

Publisher URL

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UNSWLJ/1998/49.html

Copyright

Copyright © 1998.

Peer reviewed