Featured, Opinion, Telecommunications - Thursday, December 8, 2011 12:59 - 56 Comments

Demolished? No. Turnbull’s criticism has
only tempered the NBN argument

opinion In September 2010, Tony Abbott set one of the Coalition’s most senior politicians loose on Labor’s flagship National Broadband Network project, with instructions to wreck and “demolish” it. Fifteen months later, with Malcolm Turnbull’s credibility in the portfolio in tatters and his arguments falling on deaf ears, it is clear that mission has failed, with his criticism having only clarified and strengthened the NBN policy.

For me, the history of Turnbull’s thought process and line of argument in the portfolio can be traced back a month before his appointment as Shadow Communications Minister, to a landmark public forum he held at the Paddington RSL in August 2010. I remember the day well. It was a cold and blustery afternoon, and a friend and I had made the trek down to Paddington to hear Turnbull speak. The focus of the event was not actually the NBN; Turnbull had called the event in order to hear views from his electorate on another controversial Labor policy: The mandatory Internet filtering scheme.

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