The corporate regulator, ASIC, and the Stock Exchange should investigate whether Telstra has failed in its duty to keep the market fully informed as it played word games with the Commonwealth’s National Broadband Network (NBN) proposals process.

“On November 26, the deadline for NBN bids, Telstra chairman Donald McGauchie made a song and dance about how Telstra was refusing to put any more than a 13 page letter into the bidding process, and was holding back on the rest of the bid,” CCC Executive Director David Forman said.

“He said Telstra had to do this in the interest of its shareholders until he had a guarantee there would be not requirement for Telstra to face regulation to reform Telstra’s massive market power and ownership of both monopoly network elements and dominant retail businesses.

“But Mr McGauchie has today admitted that Telstra tried to secretly put more material in front of the Commonwealth’s expert panel in ‘early December’, well after bids had closed, specifically, the missing SME plan that was one of the conditions required to make the bid compliant with the NBN process.

“At no stage did Telstra tell the market that it tried to put in more than 13 pages, nor that it had tried to submit an essential component of its bid after the deadline. If Telstra was trying to have the SME plan accepted after the deadline it must have known that its bid was non-compliant as submitted on November 26.

“If the original 13 page bid required disclosure, surely the additional parts of the bid must also have been subject to Telstra’s continuous disclosure obligations.

“This also begs the question; what else did Telstra secretly attempt to submit after the bidding deadline had passed?

“The Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Stock Exchange must investigate whether Telstra was meeting its continuous disclosure obligations to its shareholders in telling them only part of the story.

“Telstra is clearly intent on stopping the NBN ever being built. The developments at the weekend show why the Government’s process – and Australian citizens – cannot be held hostage to the bullying teams of Telstra lawyers,” Mr Forman said.

Contact:

David Forman

Executive Director

CCC Inc

0438121114