When Crikey published Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo’s email to the editor of
a tech industry newsletter in June – “I don’t know if you have read or
heard…I am going ‘down under’ to run a little market cap company
($49B) called Telstra” – it sounded like a cute throwaway line.

Not
any more. For it’s now becoming increasingly obvious that Trujillo’s
“little market cap company” reference actually reflects his views about
Telstra and reveals the truth about his attitude towards Australia.

Crikey has been hearing from several directions over recent weeks that
Trujillo and his newly-imported cabal of American senior executives see
Telstra and Australia like a backwater with a backwater regulatory
environment and backwater politicians.

And that view is confirmed in this email that has just arrived from a Telstra insider:

If anyone thinks that Trujillo and his 3 amigos are hurting over the
savage attack which the Australian establishment (from the PM to the
ACCC boss) have, quite understandably, launched against them, they
should think again.

Quite
the contrary. In private meetings with their petrified and astounded
executives and other underlings, Trujillo is boasting that HE will take
the fight to them. The bragging is insufferable.

FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS COMPANY HAS A LEADER WHO WILL STAND UP TO THE PRIME MINISTER AND BE COUNTED.

WE WILL SHOW THEM WHAT WE CAN DO IF THEY DON’T COME TO THE PARTY.

All that followed by:

AND I TOLD THAT PRIME MINISTER THAT IF…

And show them,
he will. In Trujillo’s world the separation of retail and wholesale
will result in the effective liquidation of wholesale by doing the bare
minimum to show them the cost of regulation. How the competitors will
treat this remains to be seen, but Graeme Samuel and the ACCC team
should expect to have their hands full.

Trujillo does not
listen to anybody other than his American friends imported from his
previous gigs. The executives who ran Telstra for years are not even
listened to. Trujillo knows best so he interrupts with them
condescendingly with his famous line: I HAVE SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE.

Perhaps he has, but not the Australian version.

Trujillo
has requested secretarial support 24/7, and expects anybody to be on
call 24 hours a day any time of the week. Humility is not his forte.

Executives
expected a change of direction after Ziggy, but also expected a
Trujillo listening tour, not a takeover by a clique of Americans
appointed in an uncontested process and who had never set foot in
Australia before. It must be a record for any big corporation for so
few to annoy so many in so little time.

Within Telstra’s
ranks, the talk is whether Trujillo will be here by Christmas, and
whether or not the Chairman will follow him the next day or the next
week. Sadly, but true, his appointment may be the biggest blunder of
Australia’s corporate history.

CRIKEY: We believe the appropriate word is
braggadocio, defined on Dictionary.com as “a braggart,” “empty or
pretentious bragging” and “a swaggering, cocky manner.”