By Stephen Mayne

A senior business journalist rang on Friday to say that Telstra executives were claiming my new bro, Big Phil Burgess, was going to get a bonus for “getting Crikey onside”.

Sadly, the Crikey army let me down a bit on Thursday because that plug to 35,000 people imploring visits to nowwearetalking.com.au only generated an extra 400 visits. The big man’s email read as follows:

Stephen:

The good news – for you and us: Our webmeister reports a 65 percent lift in our visitor numbers yesterday.

The bad news: The increase was about 400 of your 35,000. What is going on? I figure we should get at least 10 percent, given your influence – that would be 3,500 extra…0r 3,100 SHORT!

You should at the minimum get 2 percent (the response rate for a typicial mailed survey). That would give us 700. You are 300 short there, mate.

Don’t let me down on this. I know it has only been a day, but still….

Close Trujillo confidant Phil Burgess has made it clear he sees Australia as a 
strictly short-term option.Like Trujillo, Burgess is on the advisory board of the 
School of Public Affairs at UCLA. But Telstra's highly-paid Group Managing 
Director of Public Policy and Communications, evidently regards the telco as his 
second string. His UCLA entry describes Burgess firstly as President of the 
Annapolis Institute and secondly, as: “Temporary: Group Managing Director of 
Public Policy, Communications and Corporate Affairs for the Telstra 
Corporation.” and here is the link:

www.spa.ucla.edu/main2.cfm?d=xr&f=boardmembers.cfm&s=board