Opinion, Telecommunications - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 10:55 - 131 Comments

Disappointing: Turnbull hasn’t fleshed out his NBN plan

opinion In one of the greatest disappointments of Australia’s telecommunications debate this year, Malcolm Turnbull has done virtually nothing to flesh out the details or address criticisms of his rival draft National Broadband Network policy since it was unveiled in August.

On Monday last week, I, and many other Australians, had the chance to catch Turnbull in scintillating form live on national television on the ABC’s excellent Q&A program.

All of the Member for Wentworth’s strengths were on display for the occasion. His humour — poking lightly at “lean as a whippet” Tony Abbott and describing Paul Keating as “the Kim Kardashian of politics”; his charisma — charming the audience with his deflections of the difference between official Coalition policy and his own views and making self-referential jokes to his leather jacket fetish — and his classical liberalism; turning the Qantas’ grounding debacle into an argument for the free markets.

“The obligation of a front bencher in the Westminster System, when addressed with a question like the one you just asked me, is to squirm uncomfortably for a few minutes,” Turnbull told host Tony Jones at one point, to general laughter.

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