Dan Warne21 May 2007, 3:03 PM
A Reader's Digest survey has thrown up a surprising result: The Wiggles are more trusted -- by a wide margin -- than Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo. It hasn't exactly been a great week for the regulation-busting crusader.
A Reader's Digest survey has thrown up a surprising result: The Wiggles are more trusted -- by a wide margin -- than Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo.
While The Wiggles were rated as the third most trusted people in the country, Trujillo was rated 97th, or in other words, fourth least trusted out of the people included in the survey.
Trujillo can take solace in the fact that he is more trusted than controversial senior Muslim cleric Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilali (who sparked outrage when he compared women to 'uncovered meat') and convicted terrorist David Hicks.
Trujillo was outranked in the trust stakes by Today Tonight presenter Naomi "makeup van" Robson and Shane Warne -- himself a bit of an expert in telecommunications.
It hasn't been a good week for Telstra. Despite burning tens of thousands of dollars on national newspaper advertising bemoaning how the competition regulator is "stopping" Telstra from building a broadband network, newspaper columnists have hit back by unpicking Telstra's arguments.
Mark Pesce, founder of FutureSt, a Sydney-based technology and media consultancy, wrote an opinion editorial for Sydney Morning Herald on "Why we all hate Telstra".
"For all Telstra's size and power, it only ever seems to whinge. Like a bully who goes crying to mummy after being decked by a seven-stone weakling, Telstra recently splashed its whingeing across the nation's newspapers ... complaining that the ACCC, our last bulwark against the ravages of unfettered capitalism, prevented it providing high-speed broadband service to Australia's capitals.
"This isn't true at all: the ACCC is simply refusing to let Telstra translate its incredible economic and political power into a new broadband monopoly."
Admittedly, Pesce (an American import himself) didn't get all of the facts right -- he described learning soon after he came to Australia that Telstra had "made an agreement with all the internet providers in Australia that set the price of data traffic incredibly high." This can't be true -- ISPs haven't agreed with Telstra about anything in the last decade.
In The Australian , Michael Sainsbury wrote: "It bullies its suppliers, it bullies its customers, it bullies its staff (talk to any Telstra call centre operative). It bullies its competitors, it bullies the Government, it bullies the media -- and, boy oh boy, has it laid into the regulator!
"But not only is bullying ugly and unbecoming, it often proves counter-productive."
And for The Courier Mail , Mike O'Connor wrote about the fundamental difference between American business tactics and Australian values.
"Bullying may be seen as a legitimate tactic in the US. But to give in to bullies in this country, however, is seen as weakness and as a tactic, can be counter-productive, a cultural difference which the two amigos have been slow to appreciate."
If The Wiggles think the pre-school kids are a tough audience, Sol Trujillo may be slowly realising that it's a long way to the top if you want to roll the Australian public.
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