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

Everywhere else in the world the model has been for the existing, generally private sector, telcos to get on with the job and for governments to provide specific subsidies to ensure that people, particularly in regional and remote areas, get a service. That is what our neighbours in New Zealand, for example, did and very successfully. Only here, in what was apparently the socialist paradise of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard—and Stephen Conroy in Conrovia—was it conceived that the government would undertake this entire project—no wonder it ran off the rails.

The fact is that nobody knew what the real numbers were with the NBN until very recently. The government did not know.

Mr Bowen interjecting—

See this speech in context