Alan Kohler has a piece on T3 in Wednesday’s Herald that, as you would expect, does a pretty decent job of unpacking what’s going on. He notes the huge commissions being offered to the stock salesmen, and concludes that:

…you can’t believe anything most brokers say about Telstra now – unless it’s bad…

He says the most common question he gets is “Should I buy shares in T3?”, and his answer is:

Definitely not, in my view. It’s a short-term yield play and a high-risk turnaround bet…

But even this, in my view, only hints at the real problem with T3 ¢â¬â namely, the irresponsible, manipulative marketing techniques that the government is using to convince the “mum and dad” investors to buy T3 shares.

Australia already permits advertising and marketing techniques to be used in securities offerings that would be illegal in many countries, including the US. I spent four years drafting offer documents and prospectuses for a Wall St law firm, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I came to work in Sydney and first saw an Aussie offer document.

Guest Post by James Wheeldon of http://www.jameswheeldon.net/ The Commonwealth Government is about to embark on a $20 million advertising campaign to encourage retail investors to...