Telstra is so much more than just a telephone company. Telstra, like Vegemite and Hillsong, is an Australian institution and part of the national psyche. For that reason I take Family First’s role in deciding the future of Telstra very seriously and I have put a lot of thought into how I will vote on its structural separation later this year.

And I’ve had a lot of time to think. On Monday my wife and adviser, Susan, had me rearrange the office files into reverse alphabetical order. It took all day. And then on Tuesday she changed her mind and asked me to put them in Greek alphabetical order while she and the other staff went to a long Melbourne Cup lunch down at the club. Because I had to answer the phone as well I couldn’t even leave the office for a sandwich, and the Milo tin was shut really tight and Susan didn’t answer her phone or respond to any texts asking how to open it so I couldn’t even have a hot drink. And then it occurred to me that Susan doesn’t let me use the microwave unsupervised anyway so I wouldn’t have been able to have a hot Milo even if I got the tin open. Heck!

Anyway, while I filed I considered the Telstra conundrum. I thought about matters of competition, the effect on mum-and-dad shareholders, and what the new logo might look like. I took into account the government’s views, the opposition’s views, Telstra’s views, and Susan’s views (one must always take into account Susan’s views), but no matter which way I looked at the matter, I kept returning to one point which has me baffled and concerned in equal measure.

If Telstra is split into two as proposed by the government, how will customers served by one half of the company make calls to phone customers served by the other half? And where will the split line be? Will it be vertically up and down, or horizontally across the country? Will it be a city/regional split? Imagine the impact on businesses, communities, churches and families. It’s difficult to overstate the hardship that will be faced by almost every Australian.

How will mobile phones deal with the split? Will you be served by one half of the new Telstra depending on where in the country you’re standing? Will you swap from one of the new companies to the other if you walk across the imaginary Telstra split line?

Thank God Internet delivery is completely independent of these little copper wires that are causing so much trouble. Nobody owns the air.

There are so many questions yet to be answered and so much grey in between the black and the white. But there’s still several weeks to go before the vote, and Family First will be sure to consider all of the both sides of the story right up until the moment of the decision, and I suspect that my engineering background will come in handy during the complicated technical debates that are sure to occur.

Until next time.