While this history does not offer neat lessons for Kevin Rudd's proposed public private communications partnership, it does provide clues about how such an arrangement might succeed, stretch and strain. Those clues lie in the technology, the market power of the institution created and its financial performance, the duration of the arrangement and the level of political support for it.

Technology is always a risk, even apparently ''future-proof'' technology like fibre to the premises. Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and industry analyst Paul Budde both call it ''the final destination'', but in telecommunications networks there is no such thing. Networks extending fibre closer or all the way to customers' premises are already being deployed on a small scale in parts of Australia and more widely overseas, so they may not seem to require the kind of bold technical gamble taken on Marconi's untried short-wave technology in the 1920s.

But the particular equipment and network architecture chosen and the speeds and user experiences they deliver are no less capable of embarrassing the broadband partners. Recent Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows it is mobile broadband that is booming ahead of fixed-line broadband in Australia. Nearly one in five Australian broadband subscribers is now a mobile wireless subscriber.

The voice telephone market shows how attractive mobility can be to consumers. Mobile phones hardly existed two decades ago. Now there are more services than people in Australia, and more than twice as many as fixed-line services.

This new network is likely to be an immensely powerful force in the market for fixed-line communications. How the Government-majority-controlled partnership uses that power will be just as sensitive as the way Telstra used its power over the last decade when, like AWA, it was Government-majority-controlled. Will the public private partnership be any less fierce in defending its investment than Telstra, any more enthusiastic about still newer technologies that threaten the expensive ones in which the taxpayer has a half-share?

Financial performance is a complicated risk for public private partnerships. Perform well, and they are criticised for milking their privileged positions. Perform badly and they are belted for wasting taxpayers' money. The Government's announcement commits only to more discussion about the price of access to the network. The delight about the plan expressed by the companies likely to be seeking that access suggests they expect the Government-as-price-setter to be a soft touch. AWA was no soft touch. One witness at a Royal Commission called it ''the most hated firm in Australia'', adept at milking revenue from patent-licensing, while arguing this was nothing less than the taxpayers that received half its dividends would expect. The value of its shares more than trebled from the time of the recapitalisation in 1922 to January 1945 but it is impossible to tell from the available data whether this performance was generated by the services that motivated the original public investment, or new areas of the wireless business that opened up soon after it, especially radio broadcasting.

Political support for the partnership was never universal or even widespread. Prime minister Hughes got his way, but not without a massive fight in the Parliament and inside his own party.

Within a year of its consummation, he was forced to stand down as prime minister. But before then, he had taken on the crucial position of ''seventh director'' at AWA, ostensibly mediating between the three directors representing the Commonwealth and three representing the private shareholders. He kept the position for the rest of his very long life.

The global financial crisis has given Kevin Rudd a rationale and an opportunity to overturn the liberalisation and privatisation consensus that has dominated telecommunications policy around the world for the last two decades.

It is not yet known who the private partners in the new arrangement will be. But the identity of its public architect is very clear. Like Billy Hughes, Kevin Rudd has got himself a partner for life.

Jock Given is Professor of Media and Communications at Swinburne University's Institute for Social Research. His doctoral thesis at the University of Melbourne was about the early wireless entrepreneur and AWA managing director, Ernest Fisk.