Fully operational death star goes into battle mode

As you may have read, the bills to sell off Telstra went through the other night.

This constitutes one of John Howard’s greatest victories – it’s an issue he has stood firm on for many years and he’s finally delivered the goods. Or so you would have thought.

Instead, the sale of Telstra seems set to be another albatross around the neck of the Government (there’s a few hanging around at the moment) because of the way the passage has gone, the dead-set kicking they’ve given their new Nationals Senators and the Telstra management on the way through and the parlous state of the company’s share price.

Dealing with the first – the Government has always said that they wouldn’t abuse their Senate majority and they would be calm and nice and what have you.

Yada yada fucking yada… When it comes to the crunch they’ll ram shit through like a plumber at a blocked pipe. No polite sitting to allow the debate to take its course, take its whacks over the knuckles and then pass the bills anyway, just wham bam…

Perhaps I’m insufficiently cynical, but I would have thought there was actually something in it for the Tories to ensure the debate was had in full so that they can pretend to still be nice and friendly and not abusive of Senate process.

All the same, the Government aren't out of the woods because the sale itself is going to be a pain for them. They can't coax the share price out of the basement no matter how many corporate laws they break (encouraging execs to talk up the share price can be construed as attempting to manipulate the market so as to make as good an exit as possible) and they're going to cop a bucket from all the poor saps who fell for the $7.40 T2 offer...

Those people are looking at a $2-3 per share loss no matter what, and are hardly going to be recommending their mums take a stake in the T3 (or 4, 5 or 6 - Howard's never said there'll only be one stage in the sale) offer.

So all up, a bad news story for the Government that will be with us for a while.

For the moment though, lucky for them that Latham the Mad came riding along with a bucket of shit to pour all over the ALP and keep them distracted for a day or two…