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

You would not see much evidence of that, but in fact he is the shadow minister for self-defence, because he spends all his time, like the famous Lieutenant Onoda, emerging from the jungles and fighting the old war. He comes back to fight the case for his misguided project.

We actually got some hard facts from the NBN Co this week which are of great importance. I remind honourable members that in April 2013, not long before the election, the NBN Co advised all of us—advised Australians—that the cost of passing and connecting premises with fibre was between $2,200 and $2,500. That is what they said. That was the work they had done. So inadequate were the management and accounting systems at the NBN Co that this figure was not just a little bit wrong; it was massively out.

We have since had a full audit, a full forensic accounting analysis of the cost of the project—and bear in mind it has now passed over half a million premises, so we do actually know—and this is what the real cost is. This is the apples-for-apples comparison. In April 2013, when they said it was costing $2,200, it was actually costing $3,359. Now it is costing $3,600. Costs have gone up, in fact, because the contractors were losing money at the time and the contracts have had to be increased so they make money.

The reality is that the Labor Party in embarking on this project did not even know basic facts. They did not have the management skills to know what it was costing. They were billions and billions of dollars out, reminding us yet again that Labor cannot manage anything.

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