Although Optus is a privately owned carrier, with its largest shareholder UK-based Cable and Wireless, Optus still maintains a variety of legacy responsibilities for satellite communications on behalf of Australian security and defense agencies.

In addition, Optus is building a new generation satellite that will carry significant payloads that will provide dedicated government and defense communications. These include highly secure communications between Australian naval ships and Australian embassies abroad.

The technologies supporting these payloads are being partly supplied by US contractors reflecting Australia's long term defense ties with the US.

Adding further pressure to the deal is a lack of democratic and human rights in the island nation of Singapore which to this day remains under the tight control of a small ruling elite that pays little heed to the democratic principals of Australia and other western nations.

Moreover, the current CEO of SingTel, Lee Hsien Yang, is a Brigadier General in the Singapore defense forces and the son of former prime minister and now Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

In a report carried by Australian television channel SBS on Wednesday evening, Desmond Ball director of the Canberra-based Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, voiced serious concern that the takeover placed highly secret Australian satellite communications at risk.

Ball further added there was the danger of technology leakage from the new satellite program to Singapore.

Such a development could undermine Australia's defense technology arrangements with the US.

The television report also raised growing concerns by Australian defense officials over the deal, despite assurances by SingTel that any current arrangements relating to defense and government communications would be maintained.

Until now the implications of the takeover of Optus by a company largely owned by a foreign government have been ignored by the Australian government which has been more focused on its strategies and tactics for reelection later this year.

During the television report the Australian minister for communications Senator Richard Alston appeared startled at the questions been asked and the potential implications of the takeover deal that had to now be heralded as a triumph of Australia's open market policies.

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