Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the admission by his communication minister today that there had been no cost-benefit analysis done for the proposed National Broadband Network. How can Australians have confidence in the government’s capacity to deliver value for money when it is willing to spend $43 billion of taxpayers’ money without even having a business plan?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the Leader of the Opposition would well know, when the government announced plans for a national broadband network we said at that stage that we would also welcome co-investment by the private sector. That is the first point to make; and, secondly, therefore the proposition which underpins his question is largely undermined. Can I also say in response to the Leader of the Opposition that the reason the government took the extraordinary step of saying that we would build a national broadband network is that we saw 12 years of conspicuous failure on broadband on the part of those opposite.

The reason we have embarked upon this reform is that what we see in the most recent OECD report is that, firstly, Australia is in the bottom half of the OECD for broadband take-up. Secondly, the monthly broadband subscription price for medium-speed connections is US$56. That is the fifth most expensive in the OECD. Thirdly, Australia’s broadband speed lags behind 26 other OECD countries, including the Slovak Republic. The government is acting because the previous government engaged in an absolute neglect of this country’s critical infrastructure for the future.