IF the Rudd Government thought Telstra was going to take some of the heat out of its legal battle over the Coalition’s awarding of Commonwealth money to a competitor, it must be disappointed.

Telstra has confirmed it will continue legal action to force the disclosure of documents used by the Howard Government to justify the awarding of $958 million to the Optus/Elders (Opel) joint-venture to build broadband infrastructure in regional Australia.

The company has simply switched the focus of court action from former Communications Minister Helen Coonan – with whom the company had a poisonous relationship – to the new Minister, Stephen Conroy.

Telstra said yesterday it would write to Senator Conroy and ask him to cut short the court action by voluntarily releasing the documents that would explain how the decision to award the business to Opel was made.

The company said it would proceed with plans to appeal to the Federal Court a lower court decision that denied it access to the documents.

“Telstra first took this legal action based on the principle that governments should act transparently and be accountable when they spend taxpayers' money,” Telstra group managing director for public policy and communications Phil Burgess said in a statement.

“We also believe that Telstra shareholders, who are also taxpayers, deserve to know how a commercial rival was given such a large taxpayer-subsidised benefit despite the existence of a competitive market in mobiles.”

The move comes exactly seven months since he announcement by the then Government that it would fund the OPEL wireless broadband network for regional Australia.

“Seven months later OPEL has no management, no carrier license, no confirmed spectrum and no settled technology platform. It is, in every sense, a phantom network offering phantom services to phantom customers,” Dr Burgess said.