Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister promised every Australian would have access to internet speeds of between 25 and 100 megabits per second by the end of 2016. It's now the end of 2017 and two million Australian households have been told to wait even longer. Why has the Prime Minister failed to deliver the NBN, like he promised?

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

That goal of having everybody—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

The policy document was very clear. It said our goal, our objective, was to get everyone to have access to 25 megabits per second by 2016. We did not say that we would complete the NBN by 2016. In fact, the policy document forecast a completion date by 2019. It will be completed, so the company says, the following year. However, after we came into government, we obviously had the first time to see what had happened at the NBN, the first time to examine the circumstances, and we conducted a strategic audit, the results of which were published at the end of 2013. Armed with that information, it was clear that our objectives could not be achieved, and we said so, and we said why. The company was set on a new, more practical, businesslike course. It is getting on with the job, and it will have about three-quarters of Australian premises covered by June next year. It will be completed, as I said earlier, according to the company's forecasts, by 2020. We inherited a colossal wreck from the Labor Party—hopelessly mismanaged. What we have done is made the best with that. There's a lot of money that has been wasted by Labor that we cannot recover, but we're getting on and completing the project.