House debates Ministerial Statements

National Broadband Network

Thursday, 12 December 2013 House of Representatives

Jason Clare

Jason Clare Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications

12:16 pm

I am holding the real strategic review of the coalition's dodgy second-rate NBN plan. It is the unadulterated, unamended, uncensored version of the coalition's plan. It was written before the minister sacked the experts at the NBN and put his mates in charge. It is the report that the minister does not want the people of Australia to see. It is the secret advice that was given to the minister in his first weeks in the job but he never released until today.

The minister says that this is an old report: it is dated Friday, 20 September. It is a 154-page document, very detailed, and, funnily enough, it does not say what the minister just said. It paints a very different picture. It is a scathing document, scathing of the coalition's plan. First, it says building the NBN in two stages is the wrong approach and is 'not recommended'. It says it would cost more and take longer. Second, it says the coalition's election promise that all Australians will have access to speeds of 25 megabits by 2016 is 'unlikely to happen'. Now we know why they said that.

Comments

No comments