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

I thank the honourable member for his question. I note that last month I tabled a landmark report by one of our most distinguished public servants, Bill Scales, on the rushed and chaotic public policy process that led to Labor's fibre-to-the-premises NBN. The opposition says that Bill Scales is a mate. Well, he was appointed to not one but two important government inquiries by Prime Minister Julia Gillard—both the Bradley inquiry and the Gonski inquiry. Over 40 years he has served governments, both Labor and coalition, as secretary of the Victorian premier's department and as chairman of what is now the Productivity Commission. He is one of our most distinguished public servants. And Labor, rather than facing up to the reality of the facts that he revealed in his report of this disgraceful public policy failure, wants to attack him personally by calling him a 'Liberal mate' when in fact he is a man, the chancellor of Swinburne University and one of our most distinguished public servants.

What his report revealed was that in only 77 days, between 29 January 2009 and 7 April, Labor moved from a conventional policy on broadband to one that involved them spending $43 billion in a wholly government owned project. That was the measure of Labor's failure. You have to hand it to the member for Blaxland and the member for Greenway. There they are—they are the ones that are left defending Labor's failed policy, which has been demonstrated to have failed.

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