Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Hansard source

by the minister, as it was with the previous minister and now Prime Minister?

Senator Conroy interjecting—

I think the opposition is trying to defend the indefensible. There was so much money wasted under the previous administration. My understanding is that in excess of $6 billion was spent to deliver access the broadband to fewer than three per cent of premises in Australia. Mr Deputy President, you do not need to be a Rhodes scholar to extrapolate that out: if you have $6.5 billion to get to three per cent of premises, how much is it going to cost to get to all premises? Many of those premises with early access to the NBN rollout under the previous administration were those that were easier—the low-hanging fruit concept, which is often used in this place to describe taking the easy stuff first. This government is not going for the easy or the low-hanging fruit first. As well delivering the NBN as quickly as possible to the greatest number of people and as cheaply as possible, we are trying to deliver it first to those people who have very poor access or have no access. Instead of focusing on where you will get the quickest return for your money, we are trying to deliver this more equitably to all Australians.

The other thing we always seem to fail to mention in the narrative about the NBN is the fact that, unfortunately, we have to be able to afford to deliver everything. Senator Conroy and the gold-plated NBN he proposed rolling out—