David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The NBN is perhaps the single greatest failure of the previous Labor government in economic policy. The way this project was proposed was an extraordinary act of economic vandalism. To understand that, we have to go back to the genesis of the NBN, Deputy Speaker, because you will recall that back in 2009 the NBN was conceived on a napkin. The project to build a National Broadband Network was conceived without any financial analysis and with brief conversations between the then Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, and the communications minister, Senator Conroy, flying between different cities. They decided to build a National Broadband Network.

Initially, they said that the government investment would be $4.7 billion. There is a problem with that. The problem is that the actual cost of the NBN, as proposed by Labor, is at least $73 billion.

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