I gave up in disgust, years ago, but that’s about right. Telstra accepts our funding and avoids doing what they’re being funded to do. For me, the last straw was when Telstra’s excuse for not maintaining a certain line was that it wasn’t “commercially viable”. Why the 
do they think they’re being paid?
Telecommunications is a vital service. If the private sector (Telstra) will only bother with the profitable bits, then we (the people) should take it all back. I gather that we can’t just do that. The Constitution says something about due compensation. I’m sure that, with a little creative accounting (offsetting the damage they’ve done against the value of the network), we could end up presenting them with a bill in place of compensation.
