Another Australian here, surprised to hear Tesla selecting someone with a background in such a reviled (in Australia) company, Telstra. It's like if Microsoft had picked a former Oracle exec to replace Balmer, except in a world where Oracle was also hated by the average Joe Blo, not just techies.
I posted this as a response to another comment, but I think it deserves a top level comment:<p>I just want to chime in here to say: when I recently tried to purchase an iPhone SE from Telstra's online store, the device was out of stock. They couldn't tell me when they expected to have it back in stock, or it was being end-of-lifed. No straight answers.
I spent 15 hours, over two weeks, on the phone to Telstra trying to get the order cancelled and my money back. I gave up with that.<p>And went in to a Telstra owned Telstra store and politely but sternly demanded my money back by asking the managed to call his escalation point(s) until he found someone who could authorise the return of my money.<p>After half an hour he was asking me to leave and I repeatedly said "not until I have my money back". I wasn't being threatening at all, rather I was pleading with him to understand my position.<p>He picked up his mobile and said he was dialling the police.<p><i>That's how Telstra treats it's customers.</i><p>That's what Denholm is bring to the table: <i>the worst customer experience in Australia with regard to telecommunications</i>.<p>That's not just my opinion, Telstra has repeatedly been voted as the worst customer telco related experience in Australia for <i>decades</i>.
In most companies, the CEO reports to the chairman of the board and the chairman of the board reports to the shareholders ( particularly the major shareholders ).<p>The biggest TSLA shareholder is elon musk and many of the large shareholders are friends/backers of elon musk.<p>So this is a purely superficial move for optics.<p>She gets a nice sinecure with a fat paycheck. Musk gets the feds off his back.
> Ms. Denholm, the chief financial officer of Australian telecommunications firm Telstra Corp., has served on Tesla’s board since 2014 but has fewer ties to Mr. Musk than most of the company’s directors.<p>Yin and yang