Australia's desire to split up the country's incumbent service provider Telstra continues to fade from reality as the country's Greens political party appears to be against the mandate.
Just how influential is the Greens party? Because the Greens sometimes have the deciding vote in the upper house Senate, they could shoot down the Australian government's proposed telecom reform plans that would break up Telstra's wireline network and use it to fund its $39 billion National Broadband Network (NBN). Lack of support to break up Telstra is being greeted favorably by the market as Telstra's stock rose four percent.
One of the reasons that the Greens aren't saying yes to the break up yet is because Communications Minister Stephen Conroy would not share a study on the design of the NBN. Although supportive of the NBN concept, the Senators want to see the study before making a final decision.
"It's a refusal to comply with an order for the production of documents. On a project of this scale, that's a very serious thing for the minister to do," Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said in a Reuters' article. "I would say that with the amount of bad faith that's been generated in this debate so far, it's a really foolhardy move."
For more:
- Reuters has this article
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