Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, and his letter to Australia the day after the 2013 election. He wrote:

I want our NBN rolled out within three years and Malcolm Turnbull is the right person to make this happen.

More than four years later, can the Prime Minister confirm he has failed to deliver on the government's promise?

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

That is a not entirely unfamiliar question and the answer will be even more familiar, so I'll be brief. As of the last weekly report, the NBN Co has 6,518,096 premises ready to connect and 3,282,093 active paying customers. There were just under 80,000 premises added to the network in the last week. This rollout is proceeding at an extraordinary and unprecedented pace.

The honourable member knows very well that we inherited a train wreck created by her predecessor, Senator Conroy. We put in a thorough strategic audit shortly after the election in 2013. We changed the board. We put in new management. Since that new management has been in place, all of their corporate plan objectives have been met. They're on track to get the project completed, as they said they would, by 2020.

The honourable member has raised in the past issues around hybrid fibre coaxial, which represents a little bit over five per cent of the network. That deployment is being slowed for six months to ensure customer experience is improved, but the company assures us the project will still be completed in time as forecast.