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

All right. I should have called a point of order. I have no right to reply there; fair enough. I now want to turn to the rollout of the NBN. I want to ask the minister whether he is concerned and what he is going to do about the failure of the NBN to meet its rollout targets. It was originally forecast, in late 2010, to pass 950,000 brownfield premises by 30 June this year. In August 2012 that was scaled back to 286,000 premises—a massive reduction. As of the end of March, that was scaled back again to somewhere between 155,000 and 175,000 premises to be passed. As of mid May, so we have been told, they have only passed just over 70,000 premises.

The big issue here is whether there is a flaw in the construction model and whether this project is genuinely scalable in the manner contemplated in the corporate plan. We are being told directly—through the media and elsewhere—that contractors are not making a living out of this work. I was talking to a contractor today who said to me that his rate to excavate, remove and dispose of a Telstra pit made of asbestos-containing material was $78. He said he cannot make a living out of that. He said his rate for putting in a new, large, plastic pit and setting it all up—buying the pit, labour, materials and everything else—was $295. This is a very relevant issue. Is the reason the project is running so slowly the fact that the contractors are not making a quid out of it?

The challenge is that at the moment the NBN Co. is passing 353 houses a working day, in this half year. That is the current rate. They should have been passing over a thousand. Their plan calls for them next year to be passing 10 times that number. Every time the NBN Co. has missed a target—and this is a fact, this is not conjecture—it asserts that the ramp-up is going to be even steeper. I ask the minister whether the government is satisfied with the rollout so far and what measures he believes the government and the NBN Co. should take to enable it to get closer to meeting the targets in its corporate plan?

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