BARRIE CASSIDY: We will go to your portfolio issues now. The NBN. Given the size and scope of that, does that mean the issue will be the biggest challenge for you over the next three years? Inevitably it will dominate what you do?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: It is certainly a very big issue in the portfolio. I hesitate to say it is the biggest, because the minute I say that something else will blow up that will be even bigger, but it is a very big issue.
The Labor Party has left us with a shocking mess there. This project has been going for four years and they've completed less than two per cent of the construction. It has been a shocking exercise in mismanagement right from the conception of it. Anyway, we have a lot of work to do to sort it out and it is under way now.
BARRIE CASSIDY: You have a review under way now, will that slow it down? When will the re view start and how long will it take?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: The review starts on Monday I guess. Ziggy Switkowski, the new executive chairman has only just been appointed after Cabinet on Thursday, and it is due to report in 60 days, on 2 December.
What it is seeking to do, Barrie, is firstly tell us exactly where the project is at the moment. We want no nonsense factual, no spin, where are we now. Then we need to know what it will cost and how long it will take were we to continue it on the specifications the Labor Party had set. Fibre to 93 per cent of the population. That's a very important benchmark.
Then to analyse and assess what are the options for doing it more quickly, completing it more quickly and at less cost, both the taxpayers' and of course more affordably for consumers. After that is complete, we will then know the context, the parameters, within which we can make the policy decisions.
BARRIE CASSIDY: What if it shows if you spend less now, you might have to spend more later on? Are those sorts of outcomes going to be taken seriously by you and the government?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Of course. As a keen student of our broadband policy, you would have noticed there is a lengthy discussion about the time value of money and the whole debate about spending money now to cater for demands that might not arise for 20 years. That's very quantifiable and something that will be a key part of the strategic review that we are talking about right now.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Future broadband requirements, will it look at that as well?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Absolutely. That's a key part of it. In fact, this is something that is being done in a number of markets, to look at broadband demand now and then to analyse it carefully because there has been a lazy assumption that demand for additional higher speeds, for example, line speeds, is just going to increase exponentially. You don't have to reflect on it to realise that can't be right.
You are talking tens of billions of dollars being spent here, you have to focus carefully on demand. If you get these things wrong, you can spend a lot of money you don't need to. In Sydney, think of the cross city tunnel, hundreds of millions of dollars wasted, misspent, when they assumed it was going to have 90,000 cars a day, it only had 30,000. If you get demand forecasts wrong, you can spend a lot of money you don't need to.
BARRIE CASSIDY: As you open up the network to greater competition, what do you say to the Nationals about that and what that implies about the disadvantage for the bush?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Interestingly, Barrie, under our approach, the bush will do much better because there will be much more wire line broadband, so faster broadband and more affordable broadband in the bush for reasons you can only put down to ideology and prejudice.
The Labor Party said fibre to the premises would be the answer for 93 per cent of the population. One of the cut-offs was communities with less than 1,000 premises, 1,000 houses and businesses. There is a lot of country towns that fall into that category and they don't regard themselves as isolated hamlets.
Those country towns are absolutely ideal for the fibre to the node architecture that we will certainly be deploying, the question is how much of it, because those towns have typically got a Telstra exchange connected to fibre, so you can very readily upgrade your service in that country town to very high speed broadband, higher than you can get with wireless, which is all that the Labor Party was going to offer them.
The bush will get better broadband sooner and more affordably under our plan than they would have done under Labor's.