– Our compaign to challenge the telco’s outrageous anti-male domestic violence policy has been successful.
A miracle has happened. Thanks to the lobbying efforts of all my supporters, we have had a win! Telstra has retreated from their recently announced policy of cutting off services from men whose partners allege they have been violent.
Following the flood of complaints sent to senior Telstra managers, my correspondents are now receiving a letter from one of these bosses stating that “the way this message was communicated to our customers was not clear and we are sorry this has created confusion and distress.”
She went on: “The change is designed to give alleged victims the option – if they are the verified end-user of a service—to transfer the phone number or email address into their name. Only services used by the alleged victim would be disconnected from the alleged perpetrators account and moved onto their own account. This allows the alleged victim to manage their own service in their own name. Any other services on the alleged perpetrators account will remain unchanged. This is designed to support alleged victims regardless of gender.”
Yes, sure. Except that we know male claims to be victims are rarely taken seriously. In fact, Telstra slipped up in previous policy announcements, referring to transferring “her phone number”.
But still… Here’s the brand new policy announcement from the Telstra website:
So, no more slick talk of removing services from alleged perpetrators. That’s certainly a step forward – even though there are many fundamental issues that still need to be clarified. For instance, determining who is the end user in a family business won’t always be easy. And if a woman in such a business convinces Telstra she is the end user it does appear she could be given that critical business email address or phone number, and the alleged perpetrator would lose this vital access to the business, despite the new Telstra assurances.
Amazingly, the full terms and conditions for this policy won’t be published until December 11, which is the very day the policy comes into effect. One suspects Telstra lawyers as well as their PR people must be all running around like chickens with their heads cut off – dealing with what is clearly policy made on the fly.
We are delighted that One Nation Senators are ready to ask questions about this whole fiasco in Senate Estimates in the first week of December. They will be grilling ACMA, the regulator for the sector, about the appropriateness of these various Telstra policies. Telstra used the ACMA standard to justify their previous inflammatory policy.
It’s all rather a hoot. But major cause for celebration. And all thanks to you, my brilliant Arndt Army.
Do keep up the pressure on Telstra. (This draft letter does now have the right email addresses for key executives – sorry about the glitches last week). But quite a different letter is now required, addressing the new developments.
It shows we do have power – if we ensure our voices are heard.