John Linton
......Taken , quite possibly mistaken, from Trujillo's statement that he was returning to the USA after, apparently, just remembering he had family there that he hadn't been able to find time to see during his last four years of jetting around the world.
....also with sincere apologies to the ghosts of Julius Caesar and those great people who struggled so hard for so many years to ensure I could read Livy, Catullus, Virgil and so many others in the original language and so improve my understanding of written English syntax (not that it is apparent these days and quite possibly never was).
So the Sol is setting on Australia and apart from his $A15 million for his last year's 'work' he will depart with a further "leaving bonus" of, according to last night's news, up to a further $AXX million. Perhaps it's worth that further gargantuan and inappropriate bonus just to get rid of the person who has done more to ensure that Australians continue to have the worst communications systems in the developed world at the highest, by far, prices.
So Trujillo found another bunny (can McGaughie be described as a "bunny" with that permanent scowl of irritation on his face?) to pay him inordinate sums of money to play around with a telecommunications company which he had to leave before his contract was up with the company that employed him in tatters. Nothing new to see here - move on - that is his performance three successive times before Telstra so what would anyone expect?
What Trujillo and co's exhorbitantly paid holiday in Australia has actually meant will be endlessly dissected over the next four months by much cleverer and astute people than me but my, quite possibly jaundiced, take on it is that, apart from a couple of dozen vastly overpaid Telstra 'senior' managers, the fact appears to be that every other Australian will be glad he is finally going:
1) Telstra retail and corporate customers who have only seen their bills go up.
2) Telstra employees (other than the dirty two dozen) who've seen their jobs eliminated, 'reclassified' and their salaries not keep up with the CPI.
3) Telstra shareholders who have seen no 'recovery' in the share price and have seen Telstra continue to borrow money to pay their bribes, I mean dividends.
4) Two Federal Governments.
5) Wholesale customers who were described as parasites and then treated accordingly.
So, pretty much, every Australian - a consistency seldom achieved in this mostly easy acceptance country. There is something about so many "American business executives" that is completely alien to Australians and that has been my observation for getting on for 40 years although the Australian "culture' has changed quite considerably over that time and I wouldn't know what it is any more. Perhaps Australia's last 20 or so years of migrants from countries devastated by America's military adventurism on behalf of its oil and armaments industries has actually deepened the older and simpler based casual contempt that very different generation of Australians had for most things from the USA.
Exetel will also be glad to see the end of those US carpetbaggers as their actions made a total mess of our tiny business and forced us to move from being happy to be a value added reseller of Telstra services to something completely different by having our supplier change from being happy to have value add resellers to one that did their very best to drive us out of business.
Strange four years in that respect. It will be interesting to see whether the Telstra board gets rid of the equally divisive, and equally totally inept, McGauchie who has to share the blame for the mess that he brought about by hiring Trujillo and co to create, or at least to remove his snarlingly, sneering, petulant visage from Australian television as their contribution to the reduction of visual pollution in Australia.
So, onwards and, as far as can be done in difficult times, upwards. There will be no change in Telstra for some 12 to 18 months if there is any change at all so Trujillo's long overdue departure will make little/no difference to the current telecommunications scenario in this country.
Carpe Diem.