Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Hansard source

The minister nearly leapt to his feet so I hope he has got an answer to my question. I have a second question for him. Would the minister explain to us why the corporate plan that the government released for the NBN in December 2010 has been proved to be so terribly wrong? For instance, it is worth comparing the December 2010 forecasts with the current forecasts in two respects. I draw the minister's attention to this. The 2010 corporate plan at page 15 forecasts passing 950,000 brownfields households—that is, households in built-up areas—by June 2013. Including the latest figures from the third progress report with the latest roll-out schedule, on our calculation—and I asked the minister to confirm this earlier—we get 255,143 brownfields houses passed, or 26.9 per cent of the original forecast. I ask him whether that is correct?

The 2010 corporate plan at page 15 also forecast passing 319,000 greenfields households by June 2013. Including the latest figures from the third progress report with the roll-out schedule, we get 21,946 greenfields houses being passed by that date, or 6.9 per cent of the original forecast. I ask the minister whether it is in fact correct that the 2010 corporate plan is so far out, and out of date, that currently they are expecting by June 2013 to pass only 26.9 per cent of the brownfields households forecast in 2010, and a miserable 6.9 per cent of the greenfields households forecast?

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