Opinion: Send in the (network) clowns

Where’s this happening? Thailand? The Philippines? Somalia? Nope. Right here in Australia. And the insurgents are known locally as Telstra. And what they’re trying to hijack is the National Broadband Network project.

They’ll probably get away with it too – no sign so far that anyone is prepared to say no.

After playing hard to get and saying they weren’t even going to bid, Telstra finally pulled a last minute tender response out of its back pocket.

Maybe it fell down behind the lounge in Sol’s executive suite and nobody could find it. But wait, the tender isn’t complete.

It’s just a taste of the fabulous things the company would love to offer us if only the pesky government would sign on the dotted line – where it says “For The Exclusive Use Of Telstra”.

Well, excuse me, but I didn’t notice any clause in the request for tender which said “incomplete proposals with additional demands welcome”.

Last time we checked, tenders were just tenders. You offer to supply what’s asked for in the tender and name your price.

That’s the whole point of a tender – a supposedly level playing field for everyone to submit their best offer. How are the other bidders supposed to respond to the latest nonsense from Telstra?

Maybe Terria could re-submit their own bid, with an offer to takeover Telstra’s existing copper network, which they got for nothing anyway, and banish these clowns to wherever clowns go when they’re no longer funny.

There’s certainly nobody laughing at Telstra’s antics any longer. We’re just sitting here wondering why we still haven’t started building the new fibre optic network.

And the government should adopt worldwide best practice here – refuse to negotiate with insurgents, hijackers and blackmailers.