Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. For six years the Labor government worked not towards the light on the hill but towards the great liability on the hill. That was their effort—six years towards that big liability. One of the major components of that was the delusion that the National Broadband Network would be a wonderful investment. Indeed, when it was first announced by Prime Minister Rudd, he said it was going to be so fantastic that mums and dads would be lining up to invest in it. You could just imagine the government bringing in the crowd control barriers and training the Australian Federal Police to link arms to hold back the hordes of anxious investors desperate to get their stake! But Prime Minister Rudd said, 'No, no; you can only have 49 per cent.' Well, that fantasy did not last very long.

But even as recently as the middle of last year, Senator Conroy and Senator Wong were out there claiming the project would generate a rate of return of seven per cent and they said—

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