David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am really pleased to have the opportunity to ask the minister a question and I also want to focus on the NBN. There are two parts to the question. Firstly, I would invite the minister to reflect generally on the contrast between the management of the NBN by the previous government and by this government. It would seem to me that those opposite are responsible for one of the most grotesque examples of mismanagement, literally, in Australian government history through their failure to manage the NBN successfully. There was an extraordinary cost blow-out—the project was going to cost $4.7 billion, then it was going to cost some percentage of $43 billion and then, as was determined just after the election, it was in fact going to cost more than $70 billion. There is also the fact that the previous government spent some $6 billion on a project to service about two per cent of the population and there are a whole host of other issues. I would invite the minister to reflect on that contrast.

Secondly, I specifically want to ask the minister a question as it pertains to my electorate and the issue of the NBN. I understand that one of the improvements in the government's NBN approach as compared to Labor's is the plan to use existing HFC cable to provide high-speed internet service. Can you please describe how the HFC rollout will be integrated into the broader NBN plan, and how that will benefit my electorate of Banks?

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