TeliaSonera honcho talks about Latvian telco privatization

Håkan Dahlström, TeliaSonera's head of Mobility was in Riga briefly and sat down for a short chat with this blogger about the state of play on the issue of privatizing Lattelecom and Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT), now that the elections are over and the old/new government has been voted in by the parliament or Saeima,

Here is what he had to say on video:

Latvian Mobile Telephone to launch 4G demo on June 7

Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) will launch a demonstration of 4G mobile technology on June 7, according to an invitation sent to the press.
According to information available to this blogger, the actual test network will be set up in another Latvian city, but announced at a press event in the capital, Riga.
Your blogger will probably be on site at the actual test location. 
LMT will be the first Latvian mobile operator to launch a 4G test with speeds up to 100 Mbps, although the others -- Tele2 and Bite, have indicated serious interest in deploying the technology.
LMT is 60% directly and indirectly owned by Sweden's TeliaSonera, which launched 4G in Sweden and Norway late last year.
A commercial launch of 4G in Latvia is several years off because of unresolved problems with licences and frequency allocation. 
Lattelecom, the fixed network operator owned 49% by TeliaSonera is also running a low-key project to explore 4G possibilities.

Karlberg leaves TeliaSonera, taking Latvia experience with him

TeliaSonera's head of Mobility, Kenneth Karlberg, left or was eased out of his position at the Swedish telecoms group. It was only two weeks after I interviewed him for this blog. Mobility had shown good results and Kenneth was preparing to go (or sent his people) to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to look for more suppliers of 4G modems after being the first in the world to launch the high speed mobile broadband service last December.

It looks like Karlberg was discreetly fired from TeliaSonera because of some internal problems with others in top management. Margins and EBITDA earnings were up for Mobility, revenues were almost unchanged despite the recession in Sweden and globally. Things looked good on his watch, perhaps too good and others may have felt threatened that one star was outshining the others. The official press released in its English-language version contains the strange phrase "we need to change certain behaviors and act more like one company". Whose behaviors? And was a strong Mobility pulling ahead of the rest of the TeliaSonera group? I have not had time to scan the Swedish business press for their analysis of what all this means in terms of possible office politics. It is not unique to TeliaSonera, there seems to have been a management "Night of The Long Knives" at the top of Tele2.

As far as this blogger is concerned, Kenneth's departure means that he takes the whole portfolio of experience in dealing with Latvia and the Baltic states with him wherever he is going. There, since he will not be trying to work out a deal to privatize Lattelecom and LMT, it will be of little use to anyone. Indeed, the deal is now in nobody's hands as far as TeliaSonera is concerned (or that I have heard). Anyone who wants to take up where Kenneth (who was in charge of business in the Baltics before TeliaSonera's last reorganization) will have to start more or less from scratch. As far as Kenneth's plans to at least work out the details of a possible transaction despite Latvia's election year (as he says in my videoblog), so that only the price and date would have to be finalized -- well, that has fallen off the back burner somewhere behind the stove. A setback for the privatization of Latvia's two biggest telecoms operators, at least if one thinks selling to the Swedes is not such a bad option.

TeliaSonera honcho Kenneth Karlberg speaks

About a week ago, I was in Stockholm and had a chance to sit down for a video interview with Kenneth Karlberg, the head of TeliaSonera's Mobility unit and still (after all these years) the main man in talks with the Latvian government about privatizing the rest of Lattelecom and mobile operator LMT. Kenneth also talked about 4G and how things would be better for Estonia's Elion, now that it is 100 % owned by the Swedish group.

TeliaSonera honcho on the 4G launch

I happened to be in Stockholm on December 14, when TeliaSonera announced it was launching the first commercial LTE network in the Swedish capital (and its Norwegian subsidiary NetCom was doing the same in Oslo). TeliaSonera's Mobility Services honcho Kenneth Karlberg spoke to this blogger just after the launch press conference. The video has bilingual English/Latvian titles, as it also appears on my Latvian-language blog for my "day job".

No one first to name a price in Latvian telecoms deal?

NOTE: I got tweeted by an executive at Lattelecom, see below.

The Latvian government seems to have re-opened the seemingly dormant issue of selling its holdings in fixed network operator Lattelecom and mobile operator Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT). During an October 16 television talk show, where this blogger was one of the journalist participants, Minister of Economics Artis Kampars said the government was ready to consider selling its telecom assets, but added that the most eager (and probably only) potential buyer, Sweden's TeliaSonera, had not named a price in talks with the Latvians in early September. By Kampars' account, that meeting was one where the sides got nowhere by saying: "What do you want for the companies?" "No, you tell us what you are ready to pay." "No, you please tell us what you want..." and so on.

Kampars also repeated what he had said publically a few days earlier, that state assets, including Lattelecom and LMT, would not be sold "on the cheap." TeliaSonera recently completed acquisition of all remaining shares in Eesti Telecom (which, unlike Lattelecom and LMT, is a traded company and already had a majority holding by the Swedes). Telia Sonera was less successfully with Lithuania's TEO, failing to get the necessary percentage of shares to delist the company and force the sale of any remaining minority shares.

I haven't been in touch with my Swedish sources about the latest chapter of the neverending story of trying to buy Lattelecom and LMT, but will try to do so before I leave for the States on Wednesday to attend an IBM conference in Las Vegas (October 25 -28).

Latvia is in dire need of any revenues to patch its budget deficit and, considering that telecoms have not suffered too badly in the crisis and against a background of rising stock markets in Europe and the US, the two unlisted companies could probably be sold for a decent price. Of course, Kampars and the Latvian government will never see another LVL 500 million bid by the Swedes, as was made a couple of years back in one of the "fat years" of real-estate bubble and lending frenzy. Interestingly, the sum is exactly as much as international lenders want Latvia to cut from its spending in 2010 and 2011 (for a total of LVL 1 billion). But that chance was blown. Maybe they could try for, say, LVL 400 million and settle for LVL 375 million -- these are just my wild guesses. Even without the deep recession, which I think will last at least until 2014 in Latvia, the value of any fixed-line network will decline as everything goes mobile and 4G networks appear. So the best bid has already been lost -- maybe it is time to seize the opportunity.

From Twitter: A Lattelecom executive tweeted me that he believes the company will gain in value because of broadband, IP TV and content distribution (IP TV, video on demand and the like). Welcome to the new web order :).

TeliaSonera offers complete buyouts of Estonian and Lithuanian subsidiaries

TeliaSonera has offered to buy the remaining shares in its Estonian and Lithuanian subsidiaries for just under SEK 5 billion cash. The Swedish telecoms group is offering SEK 3.3 billion for the remaining shares in Eesti Telecom, a holding company that owns 100 % of mobile operator Estonian Mobile Telephone (EMT) and fixed network operator Elion. It is offering just under SEK 1.6 billion for the remaining shares in TEO LT, the Lithuanian fixed network, internet TV, call center and data center services company. Telia Sonera currently holds around 60 % of both companies,
The offer has been criticized as somewhat low and taking advantage of the economic crisis by a Danske Bank analyst. However, this appears to be bottom feeding on the part of the Swedes, not real vulture capitalism (which presumes that the buy-out subject is near financial death).
All of which is fine and dandy, because Eesti Telecom shareholders can get more than 24 % above the last market price for their shares, while TEO LT shareholders are offered a premium of nearly 31 %. The offer also bounced up both the Tallinn (13.3 % at one point) and Vilnius (9.7 % in mid-session) bourses, and even got a 2.7 % rise out of Riga. Which is not to say that it takes much in any of these places.
However, in terms of the Latvian telecoms market, TeliaSonera has ignored its two other (as some European languages put it) daughters or semi-daughters -- Lattelecom (where it holds 49 %) and Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) (where it holds around 60%). The reason is that all the rest of the shares are held by the Latvian government --which, to use a term of management disfunction assessment often spoken but seldom written-- cannot unfuck itself to make any kind of decision.
So, while the Estonian government will get a considerable sum for its 24 % in Eesti Telecom, and many private Lithuanian shareholders will at least smile, if not laugh all the way to the bank (the state owns less than 1 % of TEO), the Latvian government will continue to hold its shares (which it could have unloaded for USD 1 billion a couple of years back) like a turkey guarding a shitpile (tītars uz sūdu kaudzes -- is that a Latvian expression?). Or am I wrong??

Kenneth Karlberg (TeliaSonera) comments while in Rīga

Here is a short video of TeliaSonera's Kenneth Karlberg making some brief remarks about the telecoms situation in Latvia during a short visit and informal lunch meeting with journalists.

More on the iPhone tizzy in Latvia

Finally Fred Hrenchuk, CEO of Bite Latvija, has written, apparently from vacation in Canada, that Bite is testing iPhones with selected customers and will start selling the gadgets once these tests are done.
So it now looks like sometime in the next few weeks, there will be two operators offering iPhone 3G packages on the Latvian market. LMT, which has remained largely silent and missed the August 22 launch date (only the Estonians have started selling iPhones).
If there are any Lithuanians reading this, what is the take on Bite selling iPhones in your country? Will Vodafone (through its "fatting calf") get the jump on TeliaSonera in the two other Baltic countries?
As for me, my employer has me chained to Tele2, which currently has no iPhone plans. Anything from big momma Tele2 in Sweden (not that I know of)? However, one of the senior people at LETA has been seen fingering* an earlier model iPhone and speaking very well of it. As for me, I might be interested in an unbundled iPhone if the price is not outrageous...

Weird rumor-- Bite to sell iPhone in Latvia?!

I just heard the weirdest rumor for someone who is not a crackpot and has some contacts in the business, namely:

Starting Monday, September 1, Bite Latvia (of the Lithuania-based Bite Group) will start selling the iPhone3G in Latvia at various tariff plans and prices ranging from 400 to up to 600 LVL (both very pricey).

Theories: Vodafone, which has close ties with Bite, has influenced TeliaSonera (in charge of the iPhone business in Scandinavia and the Baltic countries) to let another operator distribute the innovative gadget. This also explains why LMT, the biggest mobile operator effectively controlled by the Swedes failed to launch the iPhone 3G on August 22, as was expected.

This, of course, could all be just Friday afternoon craziness...

The half-mother stays single for now

France Telecom has withdrawn its bid for TeliaSonera, a mixed offering of shares and cash valued at EUR 33 billion. That leaves the half-mother of Lattelecom and holder of just over 60 % in mobile operator LMT "still single". The Swedish side initially rejected the offer and subsequent negotiations between the companies were apparently fruitless.
TeliaSonera was probably right to shrug off the bid, where the share portion could prove to be rather volatile in value, especially if it were to have taken the merged company a couple of years to get its act together.
As for Latvia, this should (theoretically only) remove a reason for the endless footdragging by the Latvian government that would finalize a deal allowing it to divest its last remaining holdings in LMT, and to at least temporarily nationalize Lattelecom in the hope of reselling at least the 49 % held by the half-mother to someone else.
In other words, no one can say : "What if we are soon owned by the French, then what?"and wait to see what it is that "the French"may want. Maybe they aren't (and, indeed, turned out not to be) interested in the Nordic-Baltic region?
My view: just because an excuse for delaying is gone, doesn't mean that there won't be any delays. The economy is in rapid decline, inflation will top 20 % with 25 % not an impossibility, so the value of almost any Latvian asset is being undermined. Who will make 100 LVL of Lattelecom worth 125 LVL next year just to stay a small distance ahead of inflation? It may even be prudent for the government to wait, although this will be mitigated (or rather, vitiated, worsened) by other factors such as stagnation on the Latvian telco market, the inability (without the participation of the by now totally frustrated and apathetic half-mother) to move boldly ahead. etc.
Whatever happens, we will be lucky to see a resolution of the privatisation or other disposition of Lattelecom and LMT sometime in 2009. But don't hold your breath.

The half-mother TeliaSonera selling itself too cheaply?

TeliaSonera, the half-mother of Latvia's Lattelecom and indirect 60 % holder of mobile operator Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) has been berated by Sweden's National Audit Office for being unprepared to sell itself for the best price. See this report in the English-language portal TheLocal. This is especially embarrassing as TeliaSonera is still being courted by France Telecom after rejecting an initial take-over offer. Next in the wings could be Norway's Telenor, also said to be interested in a pan-Nordic merger.
In Latvia, meanwhile, Jack Shit is happening (other than some marketing activity by all the mobile operators pushing mobile internet, the Amigo pre-paid service, a subsidiary of LMT, offering post-paid services). Nothing new on the Lattelecom privatization/nationalization, and nothing should be expected over the summer as new valuations are done.

The half-mothers agree to move ahead

The Latvian government and TeliaSonera have agreed, as co-owners of Lattelecom, to study ways in which the fixed-line operator could implement functional separation. Agreement to functional separation of Lattelecom into wholesale and retail operations is a precondition for doing the swap of the Swedes 49 % share for the remaining state stake in LMT, the mobile operator and the real prize for TeliaSonera in this long dragged out process. Kenneth Karlberg talks about what was achieved:

Catching up ahead of May 21

On May 21, Sisyphus (Kenneth Karlberg) and others from the half-mother TeliaSonera will be coming for negotiations (rolling the rock again) with the Latvian government on the proposed privatization deal concerning Lattelecom. Under the proposed deal, TeliaSonera will swap its shares for Lattelecom for the state's remaining holdings in Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and probably pay a cash premium on top of the 49 % stake in the fixed operator.

Sisyphus (why do I call Kenneth that? Remember the Greek/?/ dude who was condemned to roll a stone up a hill only to have it roll back again and then roll a stone up a hill only...) should not get his hopes up. 

Still, I think that the half-mother should quietly forget about the idea of having the government sign off on a functional division into wholesale and retail operations of Lattelecom. TeliaSonera wants this to ensure that LMT will have open and fair/fairly priced access to Lattelecom's network. The Latvian government says it won't do this, but by 2010, it will have to do this because of upcoming European Union rules. As I see it, by the time the deal goes down (and we will be f**king lucky if it goes down by 2010), the functional division of Lattelecom will be an unavoidable reality.

So my recommendation: put your Lattelecom stake on the table with a nice pile of cash (let us say, an eye-opening amount). If you are lucky, the dude with the beard will say " Point one -- yes, point two -- we can sign on..." (this is a satire for my Latvian readers). If things go as usual, nothing will happen, so what else is new... As we all know, Sisyphus is head of TeliaSonera Mobility, a field where anything can happen, the future is unpredictable, technological change is mind-boggling, and nothing, nothing will be certain for Kenneth except that with Latvia, he will still be rolling that stone even if he retires, still shuttling to Riga,  as head of France Telecom Nordique Telepathy.

I have been remiss in updating the blog for a while.  Juris Gulbis, the new CEO of Lattelecom, has given a couple of interviews where he has said he will continue with the same strategy of developing broadband and related services that Lattelecom was following before Nils Melngailis was unseated. He also said that it was very important to settle the ownership question soon, so that management could get on with running the company, moving into mobile service and becoming a regional player. These points make sense, almost. If the against all previous experience, something actually moves ahead,  Gulbis could face answering to Ainars (Slesers, the Minister of Transport) and the Wackbats (the rest of the government) instead of the Swedes and the Wackbats. 

Who is smoking what?

While this may sound way off-topic, it has recently been discovered that a plant called Salvia can legally be smoked in Latvia with apparently entertaining results. It seems that someone at Deloitte in Latvia was smoking something when they signed off on a report saying that Latvia was one of the best places in the world for private equity investment.  

Hello! Hello! Are we on the same page? Or planet?

One of the world's largest private equity investors, The Blackstone Group, took part in a management buy-out bid  for Lattelecom which was given the BIG FINGER (with no rational argument) by the present government. I got the impression that the Latvian government was saying between the lines  that big, respectable private equity capital was about as welcome as a pig at a synagogue. 

I may be able to get a meeting with Sisyphus on the 21st and put up some video of it. 

Finance director named top honcho at Lattelecom

Juris Gulbis, currently chief financial officer and acting CEO of Lattelecom, has been appointed permanent CEO by the company's owners, the Latvian government and Sweden's TeliaSonera. Gulbis had been acting CEO since the April 1 resignation of Nils Melngailis.
Gulbis, born in 1969, received an engineering degree in Latvia and qualified as an accountant in Britain. He worked in banking, finance and accounting positions and was employed by Coopers & Lybrand, the predecessor of Coopers PriceWaterhouse in Latvia at a time when Melngailis was running the audit firm's Riga office.
The new Lattelecom CEO worked for Ave Lat Group, a food and beverages conglomerate owned at the time by the controversial Latvian politician Andris Skele. Later, Gulbis worked for and became director-general of the alcoholic beverages maker Latvijas balzams. For a time, he worked for the alcoholic beverages distributer SPI in Cyprus, a company linked to a controversial Russian oligarch. Gulbis has worked at Lattelecom since early 2007.
Latvian media have been speculating that Gulbis retains loyalties to Skele and may be part of an elaborate and byzantine scheme to sell Lattelecom to Russian interests, perhaps using a tangle of offshore companies that would make the "investor" appear to be a little known West European private equity company. The large US private equity group, The Blackstone Group, now represented by Melngailis in the Baltic region, is still interested in taking a stake in Lattelecom.
Others point out that Gulbis is a professional with loyalties to the owners that employ him and was chosed CFO of Lattelecom partly because Melngailis knew and trusted him because of their time together at the audit company.
Valdis Vancovics, the director of network services at Lattelecom, was appointed deputy CEO. He had been a candidate for the top post.

Latvian telco privatization --writing off yet another year?

Latvia and Sweden are similar in that both countries stop for a while after the Midsummer holiday. This is more pronounced in Sweden, but Latvia's parliament also goes on vacation after June 22, if not earlier.

With the next round of talks on the proposed Lattelecom for LMT swap set for May 21, it is unlikely that anything will be resolved before Midsummer. That essentially kicks the next "round" of the never-ending story into September, which, even if the both parties to the talks decide to go ahead, do valuations, etc., means that nothing will happen before the end of the year. So look to 2009, maybe, as the next possible time when this matter may finally be resolved. But don't count on it. 

Meanwhile, Lattelecom remains leaderless, a few more important mid-managers may leave and the value of the company will continue to drift downwards.

Springtime for Nyberg

The suitors are lining up for TeliaSonera under CEO Lars Nyberg (whence the title). Norway's Telenor, an old flame of Telia (1999) who was left at the altar (or stormed away, forgot which) is back, according to press reports. France Telecom is mulling how to bid for the Swedish telco with enough cash in the offer to attract finicky TeliaSonera shareholders. A merger with Telenor would create a real Nordic giant, though still mid-sized by global standards.
This may leave the half-mother of Lattelecom with less time and energy to deal with the wackbat* Latvian government, so she may just take any deal on offer. In other words, do the share swap using the Latvian State Radio and Television Center, get its 100 % of mobile operator LMT (the most profitable of all of TeliaSonera's subsidiaries, I believe) and forget about any covenants in the deal to functionally seperate Lattelecom into wholesale and retail units. By the time the Latvians get around to doing it -- late 2009 is for the real Pollyanna optimists, to my mind-- the European Union will decree functional separation in any case. So it doesn't matter. What matters is to get the f**k out of bed with the government, get LMT and start turning it into a full service telco (including wireline, DSL, LTE wireless internet, etc. in the next couple of years).
*an amalgam of wacko and batshit. I like it.

Une demi-mere francaise?

Word is now out that the half-mother of Lattelecom (and indirect 60 % stakeholder in mobile operator LMT), TeliaSonera, is being courted by France Telecom.
This confirms soemthing I have written earlier -- the half-mother is just a mid-sized fish. If you want to see the really big killer whales in this business, wait until the European and international telco giants get frisky. Well, now they are.
The deal is far from certain, as the Swedish and international press have been writing. The French will have to considerably sweeten any share-swap with cash, and that won't please the creditors of France Telecom, who are still owed billion for (if I am not mistaken) a deal done a couple of years back to buy/expand the mobile operator Orange.
The French are interested, most likely, in the Nordic market and the half-mother's partial motherhood in mobile operations in Turkey, Russia and some of the 'stans. Latvia is below the event horizon on this one. Lattelecom's annual revenues are about what France Telecom takes in over a 36 hour period.
So what might interest the French? LMT is one of the most profitable units in the TeliaSonera family, so it could make a good addition to Orange, even be Orange Latvia if we fantasize further into the future. Or Orange Baltics, since it appears to be in the cards that Vodafone will buy the calf -- the Bite Group -- being fattened by MidEuropa Partners. So a pan-Baltic response would make sense from France Telecom's side.
Would the French step up, roll up their sleeves and plunge their hands into the Latvian telecoms tarbaby? Probably -- first, to get LMT, but also for the fixed network operated by Lattelecom in order to expand its internet TV footprint, where France Telecom is said to be number one in Europe. So there may be a pan-Baltic IPTV project, as well.
This is far fetched to be sure, but the big telco raptors are stirring and something is bound to happen. Who knows, maybe Sysiphus (TeliaSonera honcho Kenneth Karlberg) will get to take a rest while some Kerman Karlbourg struggles for another five years with the indecisive and wavering Latvian government,

More headaches for the half-mother

The Latvian government appears to have decided to privatize Lattelecom by swapping its shares in mobile operator LMT for the 49 % of Lattelecom held by TeliaSonera (the half-mother). The Swedish stake will then be sold to a new investor, most likely The Blackstone Group, a US private equity company.
The decision was announced over the objections of a coalition partner, the Fatherland & Freedom party, whose Minister of Economics Kaspars Gerhards would prefer to have 100 % of Lattelecom put up for auction by both current stakeholders.
The government has also indicated that it does not want to divide Lattelecom into wholesale and retail units, a condition TeliaSonera insists upon. The European Union is expected to mandate such a functional seperation for telco operators soon, and TeliaSonera, British Telecom and Telecom Italia have already done so voluntarily.
My guess -- the shakily backed government plan will fall apart either because of political dissension or the non-acceptance of terms by TeliaSonera. According to some sources, Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis is ready to let everything go back to "square one"where things stay as they have been, that is, TeliaSonera remains a minority stakeholder in Lattelecom and an indirect holder of more than 60 % in LMT. In other words, the Swedes will remain reluctant and restricted owners of companies they want to either buy 100 % or divest 100 %, but these options will be blocked by the government.
Another stumbling block for the deal is that Blackstone will surely demand an airtight management agreement in order to take less than a controlling stake in Lattelecom. That means that all strategic and management decisions will be made by managers appointed by Blackstone, with the government kept at arm's length. The government is unlikely to accept this, so the deal may collapse on that note.
And on we go...

The half-mother says yes, the government --???

TeliaSonera, the long-suffering half-mother of Lattelecom (49%) has officially agreed to a proposal by Minister of Transport Ainars Slesers to a deal that would essentially nationalize Lattelecom but leave TeliaSonera with 100 % ownership of mobile operator Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT).
This is an exhumed version of what Minister of Economics at the time, Aigars Stokenbergs proposed in 2006, when he said that TeliaSonera would not be allowed to buy both Latvian telecoms operators. TeliaSonera and the government did valuations of both companies for a share swap and cash payment deal very similar to what Slesers wants to see done. The earlier deal was muddled about and never done.
For TeliaSonera, this would mean that after several years of muddling around the issue, it would at last be settled, even if as Plan B (the Swedes get only LMT). For Sisyphus (Kenneth Karlberg, head of Mobility at Telia Sonera), it means that he gets the stone to the top of at least hill B.
If that happens, LMT will be developed as a company capable of anything that Lattelecom currently offers, at least in terms of telecoms and internet. Lattelecom will be split, as was the Telia branded operation in Sweden, into wholesale and retail units. LMT will probably start a limited fixed line business, while Lattelecom will have very few options for offering mobile services.
TeliaSonera must know that the chances of Lattelecom being ridden into the ground have increased signficantly with the resignation of Nils Melngailis and if the company is nationalized and held 49% by the Latvian State Radio and Television Center (LVRTC), which has little global telecoms experience.
But wait, the Latvian government, like a finicky old maid (this is how Dienas bizness described it), is split on the issue of how or whether Lattelecom should be privatized at all. The Ministry of Economics claims there are legal obstacles to Slesers' proposed deal. The Ministry of Transport gleefully announced that the Swedes had agreed and there were no problems.
On March 28, there will be an extraordinary cabinet meeting to decide this. One side or the other will or could win, but the issue could also strain the government coalition. It would not surprise me that if someone, say, the Fatherland and Freedom party economics minister, mustered enough votes to tilt against Slesers, Slesers would pull his religious-right wing Latvian First Party out of the coalition (including the PM, Ivars Godmanis). If that doesn't happen. there is still the question of, having rejected Slesers plan and given the finger, yet again for the Nth time to Sisyphus, WTF do we do now?
I don't think the wackbat* government has a clue...
* this was defined in an earlier post, I have offered it the the urban slang dictionary online :)