Just as the media emperors are aging and departing there is a new sort of media power emerging. This week’s events should remind us that in the future media power will lie not with the individual but with the network, and in this country Telstra has the most formidable network of all.

Today Telstra’s motormouth, Phil Burgess, hits the hustings at a breakfast with Labor’s candidate for the seat of Wentworth, George Newhouse. This follows the mail out to the telco’s 1.6 million shareholders attacking the Government’s communications policy. Telstra and Labor are giving every appearance of cozying up to each other.

I suspect, in fact, that it is not as simple as that. I certainly hope that the yet-to-emerge Labor media policy will be more sophisticated. Nevertheless the entry of Telstra into the election campaign is worrying and even frightening.

Even Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch would not have been quite as naked in pushing a self-interested political point of view as Telstra has been over the last few weeks.

So far, Telstra does not employ many journalists – or only in its public relations department in any case. It’s campaigning has been confined to mail outs, advertising and web sites rather than using its muscle in the media content provision business.

Who can doubt, though, that as Telstra bolsters its position as a media company, rather than a mere provider of wires and connections, that it will be prepared to use its power?

It may well be that in cosying up to Labor Telstra is picking winners, rather than attempting to create them. But this has also been true of Packer and Murdoch.

Has Labor been duchessed? We won’t know for sure until we get the detail on Labor’s communications policy, including the arrangements for building the fibre to the node broadband network and the regulatory regime that will accompany it.

We must hope that both sides of politics show some muscle in their relationships with this new media power, or we can look forward to another century or two of communications policy governed by narrow corporate interest, rather than public interest.