Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Republic) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Get this: the Liberals said that their inferior NBN would cost $27 billion, but it's actually cost $57 billion, $30 billion more than they originally forecast. That's one hell of a blowout, and it gets worse, because now they're forecasting that there will be higher operating and capital costs for decades to come. But there's more. When they took government, they said that they would cancel Labor's better fibre-to-the-premises program because it was too expensive and they could do it more cheaply and roll it out more quickly. Well, guess what: it's cost them more than our program would have, it's taken longer to roll out and their HFC solution is basically useless. And these guys claim that they are better at managing our nation's finances. What a joke!

Then, on Monday, it was revealed that the Liberals knew that Labor's original program, which was better—the fibre to the premises—would not cost $72 billion as they claimed but that the full fibre rollout could be done to 93 per cent of Australians for $53 billion, $19 billion less than they claim. So they've not only misled about their policy but misled the Australian public about Labor's policy as well. And what for? We're currently 61st in the world for fixed-line broadband. It's an absolute joke. They're not better at managing our nation's finances.