The Coalition is still pushing its line that environmental repair requires the selling of our national publicly owned telecommunications company, Telstra. This pretense of environmental concern is wearing thin, however, with the raft of other destructive, anti-environment, anti-community projects being pursued — open slather uranium mining, greenhouse gas emission, woodchipping, development of the Hinchinbrook Island resort and the dangerous proposal to carry highly polluting slurry 290 km across Carpentaria Gulf country to save CRA a small proportion of its projected earnings from the proposed Century Zinc mine.
It's painfully obvious that the Coalition's interest in the environment extends only as far as the next mining company or financially dubious developer's proposal to rip into it. That's also why the Coalition isn't prepared to fund spending on environmental repair or any other socially imperative project — health, housing, public transport, education, social security — on an ongoing basis.
If the Coalition was serious about environmental repair, it would fund it from taxation, not make it conditional on the sale of a publicly owned company providing, relatively equitably, an essential service to all Australians. Public assets can be sold once only, but essential projects like environmental repair will need funding long after the last of Telstra has vanished into the rapacious hands of big business, taking with it an affordable telecommunications service for ordinary people.
Developments in telecommunications technology have produced a big increase in productivity and massive Telstra profits in recent years — $1.5 billion paid in dividends and taxes in the last two years. These funds could and should be put to the service of the community, for environmental repair and other essential needs. Telstra could remain a public service provider, ensuring that ordinary consumers receive an affordable telephone and other telecommunications service, regardless of where they live or how long they spend on the telephone.
Environmentalists need to recognise that there is a link between the privatisation of Telstra and the environment — but not the one that Howard describes. The interests of the community and the environment are linked by the fact that the politicians of both major parties systematically sacrifice them to big business profits. That's why all environmentalists need to get seriously involved in the campaign against the sale of Telstra and stop John Howard from misusing the environment as a pretext for the Telstra giveaway.