JUST because Sol Trujillo has departed, it doesn't mean Australia is without a telecommunications bully capable of flying off the handle and needlessly trashing relationships without due regard to a more reasonable culture of negotiation and consensus-building.
Stepping up to take Trujillo's title as chief head-kicker is one Senator Stephen Conroy. And there's a good chance that he'd take that description as a compliment.
Conroy's form as a Labor factional bovver boy is on display in today's rambunctious "my way or the highway" ultimatum to Telstra shareholders. In some ways it's a shame Trujillo isn't still around - his response would have been memorable.
What's missing from Conroy's swingeing attack on private property rights in his attempt to promote greater competition is the necessary admission of culpability: the perceived problem of Telstra competing with those who would like to have access to the network Telstra owns is all the Labor government's fault - not the fault of Telstra's shareholders who are now being ordered by Comrade Conroy to suck it up for the greater good.
No, not the fault of this Labor Government, but the previous one that stuffed up Telstra's privatisation in the first place.
It's a bit rich that Conroy now wants to fix his predecessors' mistake by lumbering the cost and loss of rights onto the people Canberra encouraged to buy Telstra shares.
It's a basic principle of half-decent government that if it wants to acquire property from individuals, it must fairly compensate them. There's zero hint of that in Conroy's ultimatum to Telstra to functionally separate, to treat its competitors are nicely as its own customers, to facilitate the cherry-picking of key customers while still having to provide an onerous "Universal Service Obligation" and quit its Foxtel holding and ownership of the hybrid cable Foxtel uses.
That Conroy is taking a cricket bat to the heads of Telstra shareholders when he's yet to work out just how his National Broadband Network thingy might really function is simply thuggish.
Conroy has talents, but calm and reasoned administration tends not to be mentioned as one of them.
There is a great and somewhat inevitable opportunity - or there was until today - to reasonably fix the mistake made by Kim Beazley and Paul Keating through the NBN process. Telstra's network could fairly form the backbone of the NBN at a great saving to taxpayers and at a fair price to Telstra shareholders.
Perhaps Conroy is just applying Beijing-style leverage to those negotiations.
Forcing Telstra to sell its Foxtel stake is somewhat more interesting and lacks the clear "greater good" argument that can be applied to functional and perhaps actual separation.
And making Telstra a forced seller with Murdoch and Packer having first dibs is a dubious proposition. Is this why Kerry Stokes has been so keen at get a slice of Packer's Foxtel pie?
There's also a degree of injustice for those with long memories. Telstra was the patsy in the Foxtel syndicate, losing a fortune rolling out the cable while Murdoch and Packer made a fortune selling content to run on the cable.
Given the constant attacks on the Rudd Government by Murdoch media, one is left to wonder why Conroy would now want to do that camp such a big favour.
Disclosure: The Pascoe family super fund, like the super funds of the vast majority of Australians, holds Telstra shares. And I'm an Optus and Telstra customer.
Michael Pascoe is a BusinessDay contributing editor.
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