The “lovely thing about ‘together’,” says a voice in one of Telstra’s most charming ads, is that “it goes a long way”.
Despite the telco having more lobbying firms on its books than just about any other corporation in the country, it has decided to respond to its massive outage all alone.
That’s left the $55 billion telco, whose chief executive Vicki Brady is in the wind somewhere out of the country, white-knuckling the crisis in-house. This was clear watching Telstra’s chief financial officer Michael Ackland dawdle his way through an apology on Wednesday. He played down the scale of the Telstra-inflicted chaos, only for a second outage to strike later that day, leaving some customers unable to reach emergency services.
Ackland said on Thursday he had spoken with Communications Minister Anika Wells about the mess.
You have to wonder why Telstra has all the hired help it does, if not for crises like these. Telstra, according to the attorney-general’s lobbyist register, has five hired guns on the books. The biggest of them is SEC Newgate, which is run by local boss Brian Tyson and offers “strategic communication”. Then there’s Principle Advisory, the lobby shop run by Bill Shorten’s former chief of staff Ryan Liddell; and Scott Mitchell and Partners, run by Scott Mitchell, who spent five years as the federal director of the Nationals before hanging his shingle out as a lobbyist.
Also on the books is Anacta Strategies, a Labor-aligned lobbying firm, as well as PremierNational, a corporate advisory and public affairs firm.
When we reached team Telstra on Thursday, a spokesman confirmed our suspicions: The gaggle of lobbyists on the company’s books haven’t been lending a hand to its crisis response, and the nation’s biggest telco has yet to call in a crisis communications adviser.
But it looks like there was at least one front where Telstra didn’t need advice. In the lead-up to Wednesday night’s State of Origin decider in Brisbane, the telco quietly pulled back its on-air advertising during the game that would’ve just driven more attention to the disaster. But a Telstra spokesman said the company hoped everyone enjoyed themselves.
“Yesterday our focus was on restoring all services as quickly as possible and supporting our customers,” the spokesman told CBD. “We know how much our customers rely on our network and understand just how much of a disruption this has been. For that, we’re very sorry. We hope everyone enjoyed a great game last night.”
Modi mania
There’s been no shortage of business heavyweights in the orbit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he charged through a packed schedule on the second day of his three-day visit to Melbourne on Thursday.
After being met at the airport on Wednesday night by federal Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, he was greeted by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese just before 10am at Sofitel Melbourne on Thursday, where the Australia-India Economic Roadmap Business Reception was held.
Chief executives and politicians were among notable guests who attended events associated with Modi’s visit. They included a CEO Forum, an education roundtable, a reception at Government House with Victorian governor Margaret Gardner, a leaders summit and a meeting with Governor-General Sam Mostyn.
This was all before the Melbourne Meets Modi community event at Marvel Stadium on Thursday evening – talk about making the most of his time.
A CEO Forum, hosted by the Business Council of Australia, at Sofitel had attendees including BHP chief executive Geraldine Slattery, ANZ boss Nuno Matos and the head of GrainCorp Robert Spurway. Also there was Business Council of Australia chief Bran Black, AustralianSuper CEO Paul Schroder and Sydney Airport boss Scott Charlton.
Members of Albanese’s team also lined up, including Education Minister Jason Clare and Resources Minister Madeline King.
An education roundtable held by Clare included Assistant Minister for International Education Julian Hill, University of Western Australia chancellor Diane Smith-Gander, Deakin University chancellor Claire Higgins and chief executive of Universities Australia Luke Sheehy.
Mixed messages
On July 7, The Australian newspaper published a story under the headline “Indian billionaire Naveen Jindal’s Whyalla steelworks bid overshadowed by looming corruption court case”. We get the sense that Jindal’s camp didn’t like what they saw.
Jindal is being advised on the bidding process by Mark Forbes, a former editor-in-chief of The Age who resigned in 2016 following an allegation of sexual harassment. Forbes fired off an email “not for publication” stretching more than 700 words that raised concerns with “factual inaccuracies” and demanding a correction. We know this because he accidentally sent it to one of our colleagues. CBD found this unusual, well, because this masthead didn’t publish the story.
When we reached Forbes about the snafu, he suggested that referring to an email labelled not for publication would be unethical.
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