They want to take us down the British road, said Australian Democrats Leader Cheryl Kernot, who believes Howard is inspired by former British PM Margaret Thatcher.
The government argues that money from the sale will reduce its debt and interest bill and that private participation in Telstra would also force reforms onto the company, which is criticised as bureaucratic and inefficient.
To get the necessary legislation through the Senate, Howard has attached a bait to the privatisation it would pay for a A$1 billion environmental repair fund but the non-government parties, all of them leftist, are not biting.
We've shown them a lot of other ways to raise (environment) money, including using seven percent of Telstra's pre-tax profits for the same purpose, Kernot said. It does not have to be sold. The Labour Opposition and even two Greens senators agree, leaving Howard to pin his hopes on the two Independent senators, Mal Colston and Brian Harradine.
Colston is a Labor defector. Before his August 20 resignation from the party, the Telstra privatisation seemed to have died when the Senate referred it to a committee in June.
But Colston says the government, swept to power with a massive majority in March, might have a mandate to sell Telstra, raising the possibility that he will vote for the sale when the Senate considers the legislation again in September.
He said on Tuesday he would want guarantees that Telstra would maintain employment in his home state of Queensland.
Communications Minister Richard Alston appeared to imperil the partial Telstra privatisation when he said on Sunday it was innevitable that the government's entire holding would be sold eventually.
The remark upset both Independents, who had accepted the government's assurances that it would sell no more than a third of the telecoms carrier.
I am somewhat perturbed to read of the government's ultimate intention of selling the whole of Telstra, Harradine wrote in a letter to Alston.
But Howard stepped in on Monday, rebuked Alston and confirmed that his policy was limited to a one-third sale.
That satisfied Colston. The prime minister has said that it's not on and one has to take that at its face value, he said on radio on Tuesday.
But Neither Colston nor Harradine will firmly commit to voting for the Telstra bill. You won't know what they're going to do until those bells ring, Kernot said. Brian Harradine is a master of this. He sits in his seat (in the Senate) until the last second of the division bell and then he shows us what he's going to do.
