The cost of making an Australian public good like beaches, museums, transport and phones free or universal is marginal – while the benefits are immense In a world that seems increasingly keen to monetise every interaction we have with it, how nice it was to watch my daughter discover she could make a “call to Santa” from a public payphone … free of charge. I say “payphone”, but in Australia payphones are not in fact “pay” phones. In 2021, Telstra, the now-privatised national telco, made all local and national calls from public phones free – as well as calls to Santa, which I guess count as “international”. Continue reading...