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

The honourable member says it is rubbish. I am just quoting what they have said.

The other matter that he might turn his mind to is this point. I seek to get his views on this question of asbestos and fibre to the node by just drawing to his attention the fact that the whole point of a fibre-to-the-node rollout, the justification for it, is that it involves much less civil works. The minister would know that 80 per cent of the cost of a telecom rollout, if not more, is in the civil works. The electronics and the cables are actually a relatively small part of it, even though they are the most obviously ingenious and brilliant. So, by definition, a fibre-to-the-node rollout, while it does not exclude exposure to asbestos-containing materials entirely—and no-one has suggested that it does, least of all me—does of necessity mean that the infrastructure between the street cabinet and the customer's premise is not being disturbed in the way it is with a fibre-to-the-premise rollout. That is why there is not the need to dig up and replace millions of Telstra pits and thousands of kilometres of Telstra ducts and pipes. I just want to draw that to the minister's attention and see if that would cause him to review his opinion.

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