Not to mention that the Government itself is a big user of Google. Various Google services are integrated into the systems of a number of Government departments. Also, Google is actually an invaluable tool for policy research (or political research, e.g. googling for embarrassing press releases put out by your opponents in years gone by). The Government's censorship plans might be stupid, but they're not going to shoot themselves in the foot *that* much.

Well, I guess the firmware blocks downloads via their APN.

Well, the iPhone isn't exclusive to one company in Australia. All the major (and some of the minor) telcos here sell it and support it on their networks.

Or rather:

3) Telstra submitted a non-conforming tender and the Government had no choice but to reject it.

Being a Government employee myself, when it comes to tendering you have to apply the same rules to everyone. If the Government had accepted Telstra's tender, even though it did not comply with the requirements in the RFT (and this was well publicised, they would have left themselves open for all sorts of problems, e.g. being sued by other applicants.

Optus was right to say that Telstra's submission was a joke: a 12 page letter to the Minister in lieu of a serious tender for a $4.7bn project is brinkmanship of the worst sort and the Government was right to call their bluff.

"I run a merchant bank that went bankrupt and have recently come into possession of $900 billion in US treasury funds......"