news Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has avoided directly answering the question of whether the Coalition will submit its alternative National Broadband Network policy to the Treasury or any other organisation for costing purposes, instead accusing the Labor Government of not being transparent about its own numbers.
The Parliamentary Budget Office last week confirmed it had decided the Coalition’s National Broadband Network policy was too complex to formally cost without significant and expensive outside assistance, leaving the veracity of the policy unclear, in the absence of government or private sector examination of it.
In the wake of the news, Communications Minister Anthony Albanese and Finance Minister Penny Wong issued a media release stating that there were alternative costing options which the Coalition could look at. The release, sensationally entitled “Malcolm Turnbull and Coalition hide broadband policy from scrutiny”, sees the pair claim that the Coalition is hiding “a multi-billion-dollar time bomb” in its NBN policy.
“Mr Turnbull claims the Parliamentary Budget Office doesn’t have the expertise to look at his broadband plan, but that doesn’t stop him submitting it to the Treasury and the Department of Finance and Deregulation for costing under the Charter of Budget Honesty,” wrote Albanese and Wong. “This is just another Coalition excuse to conceal their real plans from Australians. If Mr Turnbull has nothing to hide, he should provide his policy for independent scrutiny.”
Turnbull was asked directly whether he would submit the Coalition’s NBN policy to the Treasury for costing last week, in a press conference in Sydney. “Mr Albanese wants you to put your policy before Treasury as well. Will you do so?” a journalist asked Turnbull.
“Look our policy is available to Treasury,” Turnbull responded. “He has not asked Treasury to vet the business plan of the NBN, he has not asked them to do that and he has had our policy out there since April. If the Treasury want to have a look at it I’d be delighted to sit down with them and discuss it with them but it has been a public document for four and a half months. The real questions to Mr Albanese is why hasn’t the Treasury ever assessed your document, Mr Albanese, that’s the real issue. Because they have not. I’m sure they’ve seen a copy of it but they have no assessed the validity of the assumptions.”
Delimiter also requested a formal position from Turnbull’s spokesperson last week about whether the Shadow Communications Minister would submit the Coalition’s NBN policy to the Treasury, but has not yet received a direct answer on the issue.
The news comes as the Coalition continues to come under attack by Labor in general over its refusal to release detailed costings for its policies. In a separate media release last week, Wong pointed out a number of public comments by Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey in which the Liberal MP confirmed the Coalition had undertaken costings exercises into its policies.
“With less than four weeks to go, it simply isn’t good enough to make Australians wait until the last minute to learn what the Liberals would cut from health and education and infrastructure,” said Wong. “Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey are trying every excuse they can to hide their $70 billion in cuts because they know that if they come clean, Australians would think twice about voting for them. The [pre-election financial outlook] has been released. Their costings are done. There are no more excuses. It is time for Mr Abbott to tell Australians what $70 billion of cuts he plans to make if elected. And he needs to do it now.”
In response, the Coalition has revealed that it has had a trio of high-profile experts examining its costings over the past seven months. The figures are the former head of the prime minister’s department Peter Shergold, former Queensland auditor-general Len Scanlan and co-founder of Access Economics Geoff Carmody. However, it is believed that the trio, similar to the Parliamentary Budget Office, would not have the direct expertise required to examine the Coalition’s NBN policy, as none of the three have direct experience with infrastructure rollouts in the telecommunications sector.
At his press conference last week, Turnbull attempted to turn the spotlight on Labor over a report in the Financial Review newspaper that the NBN project had experienced a blow-out in its construction costs of about $5 billion. Turnbull also called for the Government to release the latest version of NBN Co’s corporate plan, which Communications Minister Anthony Albanese has stated NBN Co has not yet delivered to the Government.
“Let’s be quite clear Albanese’s credibility on this issue is shattered,” said Turnbull. “Everything he has said about the project this week has been proved to be false. Now the only questions is is he a fool or a nave? Did he know that that blowout was happening when he said the project was on time and on budget?”
“Did the NBN Co really not tell their shareholder the Minister about it before they told their own executives or is he so foolish that he didn’t take care to enquire of the NBN Co management as to what their latest assessment was before he said it was on time and on budget? I mean Albanese has no credibility on this issue at all, that was ended on the front page of the AFR website today.”
opinion/analysis
If Turnbull is going to demand increased transparency from Labor on the NBN, then he should commit to the same, and submit the Coalition’s NBN policy to the Treasury for costing. It’s not enough to say that the Treasury ‘could’ look at it if it wanted to — this is a formal process and one which Turnbull should engage in. As I wrote last week, if the Member for Wentworth believes in the veracity of his policy, what does he have to lose from Treasury taking a look at it?
Image credit: Office of Malcolm Turnbull
“In response, the Coalition has revealed that it has had a trio of high-profile experts examining its costings over the past seven months. The figures are the former head of the prime minister’s department Peter Shergold, former Queensland auditor-general Len Scanlan and co-founder of Access Economics Geoff Carmody.”
I found this hilarious when it was announced. Last election, the LNP got an accountancy firm to look at their costings, and their process was so flawed and incomplete that the accountants were given a “severe reprimand” from the Institute of Chartered Accountants. So what is their response? Proper scrutiny this time? No, they pick a panel of people who can’t even be held in breach of professional standards!
The fact that these clowns look like they will get away with these obfuscations is an absolute travesty.
As far as what Turnbull has to lose? Well it is entirely possible that the same risk measures he has applied to Labor’s plan could be applied to his, and there are two additional ones which only apply to his plan. Namely, how much Telstra wants for the copper, and how much it will cost to remediate.
Plus how much $ for the extra 2 to 3 power stations to run a FTTN comms system?
“As I wrote last week, if the Member for Wentworth believes in the veracity of his policy, what does he have to lose from Treasury taking a look at it?”
I really don’t think he does believe in its veracity. I know you think Turnbull has done a lot of work on the plan. Just reading the plan, listening to him talk, my IT bullshitometer goes off the scale. He has had some rough guesstimate and is pulling the rest out of his neither regions.
Nave?
If Turnbull is going to demand increased transparency from Labor on the NBN, then he should commit to the same, and submit the Coalition’s NBN policy to the Treasury for costing.
Hear, hear. Time to man up Malcolm, it might not be as bad as you think…
Look, it’s pretty simple. If you are potentially refusing to submit your costing through Treasury, then you’ve got something to hide.
The Coalition refused last time, and after realising that getting actual accounting firms to confirm figures can lead to negative outcomes, they appear to have picked a group of non-accountable experts to review the figures – presumably outside of any official oversight.
So, nothing’s changed, then. Same politics as last time – no doubt to be followed up with assertions that the country’s Treasury is biased as all hell and couldn’t possibly be competent enough to handle the job – despite them being pivotal to any future budget.
Poor form. Very poor.
Didn’t MT state ages ago, that his Policy was already fully costed, and they’d be releasing this before the election….
well the election’s in a couple of weeks, and I’d like to see “fully costed” bit checked out…
don’t want another oops moment do we
You really think Treasury or anyone else for that matter could adequately provide a detailed costing opinion on Coalition policy in the less than the 3 weeks we have before the election, after the election though still relevant is too late in terms of influencing voter decision.
@Fibroid
Agreed. So….they’ve had it since April….
Indeed, seems like a pretty deliberate “fudge” to me…
Commentators seem to be overlooking the fact that FTTN has been costed in detail by Telstra, many times. The problem was the rest of the package of regulatory reform that Telstra wanted.
It’s fair to assume that Telstra would probably have provided MT with some idea of the costs – and that it would have absolutely no reason to low ball those cost figures.
And no, you don’t need an additional ‘two to three power stations’ to run FTTn.
@John
Actually, each time Telstra have costed FTTN, it has been for a different outcome:
1- 2006 was for approx. 50% of premises at around 12Mbps by using Nodes with ADSL only DSLAMs in them. There was no specific costing, but Telstra required a full monopoly on all infrastructure (not ULL). The ACCC, rightly, rejected this.
2- 2008 RFP Tender- FTTN at 12Mbps for approx. 98% of premises for $4.8 billion + $5 billion from government for VDSL at exchanges + nodes with VDSL1….at $80/line wholesale and + $20 billion for the copper. The government and the RFP panel, rightly, rejected this.
Neither of those 2 scenarios are anywhere near what Turnbull is suggesting- a minimum of 25Mbps (double the original minimum in 2008) in 2016 to 93% and 50Mbps in 2019 to 83.7%. Telstra wouldn’t have costed this scenario. They might have an idea about it, which is probably where Turnbull got his costs, but they would not have a detailed plan and architecture in mind.
FTTN requires approx. 130MW of power for 50 000 nodes. That is approx. 60-70MW more than FTTH per day. So no, not a new power station. Just hundreds of thousands more tonnes of CO2 for broadband per year.
Quite right, john.
The output from one large power station would do it.
A complete waste of capital and operating expenditure for a very inferior outcome.
I don’t know, maybe M.T is looking after the Power Companies profitability, the drop in power consumption is creating a financial problem for them, thus the increase in power prices
Partially true.
A) To provide 12Mb
B) To only provide for some major cities
C) Max node distance of 1.6Km
Power consumption, now look at max dist from Node on the latest figure of 400Mtrs (remember 2 Dimensional not Linear ) so approx 4x nodes plus covering the other far more expensive to provide 30-40%, plus the difference in equipment cost and power consumption must take into account VDSL2 and vectoring etc and cost of running cooling
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