So the rest of Telstra’s being sold. Yawn. Not that there wasn’t some heat – and some humour – worth noting. For the heat, read Malcolm Farr in the Tele.
“Yesterday’s $3 billion deal to sell Telstra roused deep tensions
between the Liberals and Nationals which are damaging Coalition unity.”

As for the humour, well, members of our elitist, cosmopolitan Press
Gallery were left scrabbling to discover just what a “Judas goat” was
after overhearing some of the graveyard humour and scuttlebutt that
preceded the Nats’ party room meeting. They were impressed that
hayseeds knew the quote “Et tu, Brute”, as well.

To save you from scanning acres of newsprint, the best Barnaby Joyce gags are in funny man Matt Price’s sketch in The Australian.

Let me add my own gratuitous contribution. I’m still amazed we haven’t heard more in this debate about Yoji Nagaoka.
Who’s he? Well, you know the way Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi called a snap election over the sale of his country’s post
office. Nagaoka, a member of the ruling LDP, voted for the
privatisation then got an attack of the guilts and topped himself.

But while it was very amusing to watch Barnaby Joyce leave the joint
party room meeting before the cameras were allowed in – and see footage
on the teevs last night of him scooting down unfamiliar corridors with
packs of hacks in pursuit just 24 hours after he gave his defiant
maiden speech, let’s not forget one very important fact. The sale of
Telstra has been an inevitability for a decade or more.

The headline to the backgrounder by Age economics correspondent Josh Gordon says all you need to know this morning: “Privatisation a bipartisan policy.”

The stroppiest presser I’ve ever attended was held by then shadow
communications minister Richard Alston back in the middle of the 1996
election campaign, when he tried to prove Labor was planning to sell
Telstra. It was pretty hairy spin – but spin that could just be dealt
with. Spin that a good pilot could turn into an Air France Toronto
result rather than a Helios Airways outcome.

Read Gordon. Labor flogged the Commonwealth Bank. They flogged Qantas.
They outsourced a swag of services. They would have sold Telstra – if
only for the readies.

The Nats will have to wear some heat on the issue. Tony Windsor’s comments
about them taking bribes that saw him booted out of the House yesterday
have a ring of truth about them. And they have p*ssed off the Libs.
Labor has a point with its comments about services on city fringes.

Yet this sale has been an absolute inevitable for years – hence the
sense of anti-climax that pervaded the House. Phone companies and
telecommunications carriers have been up on the block since British
Telecom was sold almost two decades ago.

Trogs like NSW Liberal Alby Schultz and Queensland National Paul
Neville might have said yesterday they would abstain from voting for
the sale. They should remember that Cuba started flogging off its state
telco in the mid nineties. Nothing like bowing to reality. Viva Fidel!