Who leaked the secret Telstra documents Labor was waving around in the
federal Parliament yesterday? The documents that spilled the beans on
the true state of Telstra’s diabolical service performance; the
documents that have put John Howard under pressure to justify his claim
that the phone company’s on target for sale?

The leak sure came at an awkward moment – on the eve of today’s
introduction into Parliament of the legislation to sell Telstra. And
Labor’s been making hay, pointing out the discrepancy between what the
documents reveal, and what the Government has been claiming is an
improving Telstra service performance.

Now we know, thanks to the leak, that Telstra told the government about
a black hole in infrastructure investment, the failure of 14% of lines
and more than 14 million fault calls – and that Telstra borrowed from
reserves to pay dividends to Government and other shareholders to prop
up its share price.

Labor has been running hard on the story after revealing the documents
yesterday in Question Time, and the issue is working in Telstra’s
favour as it seeks to flush out a better set of criteria for the full
privatisation. Of course, Labor policy is to block the sale,
while Telstra wants the sale to go ahead – on its own terms.

These are some of the issues ASIC may pursue in its investigation into
Telstra. But will the corporate watchdog also investigate the leaker?

We can be sure the documents weren’t leaked by Phil Burgess’s mum. But
it wouldn’t be too wild to speculate it might have come from someone
close to the new Telstra family of senior US executives. It smacks of a
case of my enemy’s enemy being my friend.