UPDATED: Malcolm Turnbull who has a wealth of communication and IT technology expertise is set to hold the Labor party to account over their National Broadband policy after being appointed Opposition Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband.Labor who are openly supporting the roll out of the NBN to rural Australia ahead of metropolitan Australia, have failed to identify why there is a an economic need to roll out to rural Australia as opposed to thousands of schools, hospitals and businesses in Metro locations where the bulk of Australians live and work.
Turnbull is set to highlight the issue in an effort to highlight the in balance in NBN expenditure.
Turnbull a former director of OzEmail which was one of Australia’s first ISP’s will replace Victorian Tony Smith. Opposition leader Tony Abbott said there was no better person within the coalition ranks than Mr Turnbull to prosecute a case against the National Broadband Network (NBN), adding that it was his intention to “demolish” the project.
Declaring the NBN would be the “absolute focus” of the political battle of the next 18 months, Mr Abbott said.
“We intend to ferociously hold the Government to account on the issue” he added.
“The Government is going to invest $43 billion worth of hard-earned money in what I believe is going to turn out to be a white elephant on a massive scale,” Mr Abbott said.
Turnbull immediately came out swinging, with a hard-hitting interview on the ABC’s PM program, claiming the Government had not been honest about the cost of the NBN rollout.
“It is quite extraordinary that they’re proposing to spend $43 billion of taxpayers’ money on a project they say will result in an asset worth $43 billion, and yet they have provided no evidence, no financial analysis, no business case, no financial models to justify that expenditure or to convince any of us that this isn’t going to be anything other than a massive destruction of taxpayers’ money,” Turnbull said.
Turnbull – who co-founded OzeMail, now part of iiNet, in 1994 with Sean Howard and Trevor Kennedy – described himself as a “notorious Internet junkie” and “passionately in favour of broadband” but said, ” I’m also committed to not wasting tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.”
He claimed the Coalition’s $6 billion patchwork alternative plan would have been superior to the NBN, but admitted the plan would need building up to attract support.
“If you’re asking me to comment on whether it was well sold or effectively explained, I’ll let others form that judgment,” he said.
Turnbull also said he was “absolutely and utterly opposed” to the Government’s currently shelved Internet filter plan, which he labelled a “really bad idea from every respect”. “The best thing the Government could do is drop it,” he added.
