Telstra’s big-talking public policy chief Phil Burgess was in a typically combative mood yesterday when he convened a roundtable discussion in Melbourne with 40 business and civic types in the web 2.0 space.

After an initial presentation about Telstra’s revolutionary nowwearetalking.com.au site, the debate quickly turned to Telstra’s ongoing war with the government, the ACCC and various media outlets.

Telstra spinner Rod Bruem took great offence when I suggested the policy of attacking individual journalists was back-firing because thin-skinned hacks have big egos and will just keep slapping away in response.

Gerard Henderson flew down from Sydney for the occasion and agreed that journalists are precious, but suggested that Telstra perhaps wind back the vitriol and focus on understated empirical rebuttals.

Burgess said he appreciated the feedback and was taking notes, but his favourite target, Michael Sainsbury from The Australian, was still lampooned as Hans Christian Sainsbury, because he produces fairy tale stories, many of which are “just made up”.

I pointed out that someone like ACCC boss Graeme Samuel is a savvy media operator with lots of long-standing connections with the likes of News Ltd’s Terry McCrann, another thin-skinned commentator who has recently also been subjected to attacks from Telstra for endorsing the G9 proposal.

Burgess showed his true libertarian colours when he declared that “the backroom doesn’t work” and all these dealings should be out in the open. He claimed Samuel had privately confided that he won’t be happy until Telstra’s market share is down to 40% and he specifically said that it was Samuel and Costello who got together to stymie a deal that was almost inked between Telstra and the government to deliver fast broadband through its $4 billion fibre-to-the-node proposal.

Samuel’s impartiality is open to question given he ran for Liberal preselection in Costello’s seat of Higgins many years ago and was at the Treasurer’s birthday drinks last night – raising eye-brows in some quarters given he’s a public servant.

All up, it was incredibly refreshing to have such an open debate with a major public company. More companies should embrace the Telstra approach and nowwearetalking.com.au has certainly improved relations with Telstra’s employees and small shareholders.

However, we all know the Howard Government is pathetically sensitive to criticism and is therefore determined to punish Telstra, even if it means wasting billions of our dollars backing inferior proposals like the Optus-Elders wi-max alternative.

The Telstra strategy will only work now if we have a change of government – and they have certainly inflicted plenty of damage on the government over its broadband failures.