Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

to employ executives from the private sector. It was set up by Labor with a plan, at the time, to connect to 12 million premises around the country. When they left government, barely 51,000 premises were connected to the fixed-line network. It is certainly true that there were no bonuses paid when Labor was in government. I'll tell you why: it's because the performance was so hopeless. They fell so far short of their targets. They were short by 40 per cent, 50 per cent, 60 per cent. I'll tell you something else: the base salary of the chief executive employed by Labor was 18 per cent higher in real terms than the base salary of the current chief executive.

Let's talk about performance! Let's talk about how vital it was that people had reliable broadband they were able to connect to when this nation was hit by COVID and millions of people moved to working and studying from home overnight. That was absolutely vital to our nation. When traffic levels rose by 70 per cent during the day, the NBN kept going. The NBN is now able to connect to almost 12 million premises, and almost eight million premises are connected. We're getting on with the job of delivering the NBN. We inherited a chaotic train wreck of a project. We've turned it around. We've got on with delivering it. Please ask me more questions about the NBN, because I'm happy to keep talking about it all day.

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