‘I have never misstated facts,’ says Turnbull

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news Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has told radio listeners in Brisbane that he has never personally been guilty of deliberately misstating facts, despite the fact that a number of the Liberal MP’s statements over the past several years with respect to national broadband policy have been highly contested by commentators.

This morning, Turnbull conducted an interview with 4BC’s Patrick Condren, the morning host of Brisbane’s only commercial AM talkback station. You can listen to the interview through 4BC’s website, or read the transcript online. It dealt with subjects as wide-ranging as national broadband policy, the ABC and subsidies for fruit company SPC Ardmona. Turnbull’s visit to Brisbane appears to be associated with the Griffith by-election to be held this Saturday.

In one segment, Turnbull was asked when residents of Griffith would be able to connect to the National Broadband Network begun under Labor (Delimiter currently refers to the significantly altered project as the Coalition’s Broadband Network or CBN). In response, Turnbull said the Government was working on the issue, but turned the spotlight on Labor’s management of the NBN during its two terms in power under Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

“All I can say is they’ll get it a lot sooner under our Government than they ever would have done under Labor. After six years of Labor’s NBN nothing was built in Griffith and in fact only two percent of the network overall was constructed. So the project as you know was massively behind schedule,” the Minister said. “… the exact timetable is something that the company will set in due course but all I can tell is that it will be completed much sooner than it would have been done had Labor stayed in government and continued with their plan.”

Turnbull specifically accused Labor of having a “disconnect from reality” with respect to the management of the project, giving as one example the fact that NBN Co had stated it had passed some 250,000 premises with satellite broadband speeds, despite the fact that the company’s current satellite access could only serve around 48,000 premises.

Host Patrick Condren responded: “But with respect, you know, politicians embellish all the time … They do it with monotonous regularity.” When Turnbull replied that this behaviour shouldn’t be tolerated, Condren directly asked Turnbull whether he had “never been guilty of embellishing?”

“I certainly haven’t been guilty of misstating facts, deliberately misstating the facts,” Turnbull responded.

Referring to the claims by Liberal MP Sharman Stone that Prime Minister Tony Abbott had lied about conditions at the SPC Ardmona plant to be closed, Turnbull further added that Abbott had “never lied” to him personally. “Tony Abbott is a straight shooter and he tells the truth, he calls it as he is. So the suggestion that he is a liar is just wrong,” said Turnbull.

The comments come despite the fact that Turnbull has appeared to make a number of controversial statements over the past several years with respect to broadband that have been highly contested by commentators.

For example, during the Federal Election campaign last year Turnbull appeared to have made a deliberate attempt to mislead the public about the cost of connecting to the National Broadband Network’s upcoming 1Gbps fibre service, claiming on national television in mid-August that such connections would cost “at least $20,000″ a month, despite the fact that the then-Shadow Communications Minister was aware the cost was likely to be much less.

In another example, in April last year, Turnbull publicly backed as “the facts” a number of highly contentious statements by radio shockjock Alan Jones about Labor’s National Broadband Network project, including Jones’ extremely contested claim that wireless represents the future of broadband in Australia.

During the election campaign, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy accused Turnbull and Abbott of openly “lying” to exaggerate the key differences between the two sides of politics’ National Broadband Network policies, using a number of concrete examples to demonstrate his argument.

A further example has come about due to the ongoing statements being made by Turnbull, dating back to June 2012, that the Coalition would “complete the job of NBN Co”, instead of ripping up the network or abandoning Labor’s NBN policy altogether. “What we will be able to do and I will give this solemn undertaking to the Australian people: We will be able to complete the job of the NBN Co,” the Liberal MP said in June 2012. “We are not going to rip it up or tear it up or abandon it. But we will complete the objective, but we will do so in a much more cost-effective way.”

However, commentators have consistently pointed out that the Coalition’s broadband policy is substantially different from Labor’s NBN policy. It does not feature as a policy goal the completion of Labor’s NBN network, but instead currently focuses on abandoning the NBN rollout to up to a third of Australian premises already covered by HFC cable networks, as well as a further percentage of Australia which would be covered by technically inferior Fibre to the Node access technology. Turnbull has never stated that blanket coverage Australia with a Fibre to the Premises network, as under Labor, was a goal of the Coalition.

Abbott, too, has made a number of statements regarding the NBN which have been highly contested. For example, in July 2013, Abbott inaccurately claimed that the rollout of Labor’s National Broadband Network in Tasmania would take “80 years” to complete, in what Labor’s Regional Communications Minister Sharon Bird immediately labelled a deliberate attempt to deceive residents and businesses in the state.

This style of comments — as well as a number of misleading comments being made by Labor on the opposite side of the fence as well — have led to university academics claiming several times over the past several years that the National Broadband Network debate has been poisoned by a constant series of inaccurate and misleading statements.

In April last year, for example, Mark Gregory, senior lecturer at RMIT’s school of electrical and computer engineering, told The Age newspaper that the public was being misled on how alternative technologies including hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) and fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) could be used to replace fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) and speed up the NBN rollout. “The Australian public is being hoodwinked by false statements that have been substantively disproved,” Gregory said at the time.

opinion/analysis
I’ve been following Malcolm Turnbull’s statements on a daily basis for the past three years since he was appointed Shadow Communications Minister. While I believe that it is quite rare that the Member for Wentworth will go so far as to deliberately attempt to grossly mislead the electorate, I would say that it is quite common for the MP, as with all politicians, to very carefully choose the context of his remarks and to give selective answers to questions. Typically a version of the truth is provided — but nothing near the entire truth.

Furthermore, there have been a number of occasions — such as the infamous Lateline example during the 2013 election campaign, or Turnbull’s backing for Alan Jones’ highly contested statements regarding broadband — where my personal judgement leads me to believe that the MP stepped over a line when it comes to misleading the electorate.

This is not unusual in politics. Both major sides of politics do it, and I suspect you’ll find even worse examples from some of the minor parties. Even the Greens are known to have bent the truth out of recognition from time to time. However, what is a little unusual is seeing a politician baldly claim in public that they have “never” deliberately misstated the facts. That is one claim that I don’t think Turnbull can lightly make.

Image credit: Office of Malcolm Turnbull

103 COMMENTS

  1. The truly scary and sad thing is that he probably believes that everything he says is honest and factual.

    • I’d say its half and half. He’s got to be fully aware when he’s grossly misleading the public (such as going along with Alan Jones’ crap without correcting him). But then there’s his overall backward attitude to Australia’s broadband needs, which have resulted in the tragically bad CBN.

      I don’t doubt that he actually believes the CBN is the superior way to roll-out ‘superfast’ broadband to Australia. He’s been saying the same bullshit for so long that he’s probably convinced himself of it.

      • I think he’s annoyed that Labor came up with the NBN instead of him.
        If it wasn’t for Abbott being a twat about it, I believe he would have allowed it to continue, perhaps with some tweaking.

    • Like all ego-maniacs, Malcolm Turnbull is a product of his own self-delusion. The comments about Mr Turnbull ‘believing his own bullshit’ are spot on. I personally know several egocentric people who are only concerned with how others perceive them, and throughout their lives they have told so many lies about themselves to so many it’s a case of the truth being totally forgotten. The sooner Mr Turnbull stops trying to press his own ridiculous plans for the NBN – plans based on his over-embellished ‘expertise’ with the Information Technology industry – and wakes up to follow the advice of those who have a much higher level of real world knowledge than he, the better…

      • Haha so true, reminds me of Bill Clinton’s (in)famous “It all depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.” line. (You can find it on youtube).

  2. Over the last couple of years I’ve thought that Turnbull is either a bald-faced liar or a colossal fool. If his claims can be taken at face value (which I doubt that they can), then he’s narrowed things down a bit….

  3. You also forgot about the Today show statement he made about the leak nbn co part of the blue book

  4. “I certainly haven’t been guilty of misstating facts, deliberately misstating the facts,” Turnbull responded.

    Lawyer speak, he never said he hasn’t lied (as if he would ever admit he had), he just hasn’t been “guilty”. I can imagine he never felt guilty about any lie.

  5. Obviously I was mistaken.

    Malcolm didn’t spend the better part of 2013 trying to convince me that he already had a fully costed, ready to roll out policy that would result in my having a minimum of 25Mbit before the end of 2016.

    I must have dreamt that.

    • I am curious as to who could believe that?
      I admit I don’t have any experience in building a network of that scale but even I could see it was a tad optimistic. At least the time frame of Labor’s seemed realistic.

  6. Abbott and co wrecking ball good one Australia you really voted the “Adults” now.

  7. “I certainly haven’t been guilty of misstating facts, deliberately misstating the facts,” Turnbull responded, “except perhaps for that one”

  8. There is a difference between misstating facts (ie, lieing), and embelishing them. And he knows it. To use a popular example, he’s stated that Labor’s plan can cost up to X dollars, usually in the range of $90b. Thats not a lie, it has some basis in reality.

    But when he compares it to his $30b plan, its an embelished fact that uses two outcomes that arent based on the same assumptions. The result is that he embelished the cost of Labor’s plan, but didnt misstate the cost. The fact was that Labors plan might have cost that much, if several very unlikely conditions were met.

    Basically, he dodged the question.

  9. Ask a liar whether they’re a liar and they’ll invariably answer “no”.

    It’s a silly question to ask anyone and it will only be inflammatory whatever answer is received. What’s the answer we’d expect?

    MT: “yeah, that thing when I supported Alan Jones, I really don’t know why I went along with that, but it supported my mandate so what else was I supposed to do?”

  10. CBN?

    Not quite yet. NBN Co is still delivering Fixed Wireless and FTTP.

    Until it actually starts delivering FTTN, NBN remains substantially and materially unchanged.

    For how long? The last deal with Telstra to shutdown copper took 2 years and cost us $11.3Bn.

    There is NO INCENTIVE for anyone to make the new deal with Telstra over the copper network… to either happen at all or happen within 3 years.

    When you hand out $$$ by the BILLION such as given to Ericsson – they ensure at all costs, that they will get to keep every penny.

    I think we would be foolish to think that even Malcolm want’s FTTN when Wireless seems to be the endgame.

      • If you click the link in his name, it leads to this:

        https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/malcolm-turnbull-cancel-the-fixed-wireless-contract-with-ericsson

        The Australian lanscape will be cluttered with thousands of 41 meter-high electromagnetic radiation towers that will be subleased to Telco’s to be loaded up with more antennas. Fixed Wireless (WiFi) operates on 2.3Ghz and a microwave oven uses 2.44Ghz. Due to a complex and unreasonable set of local, federal and state legislation, NBN Co have been able to site towers as close as 40 meters from residents homes. Secretly. Quietly. Without proper community consultation.

        These towers transmit 24x7x365. Countries around the world are halting WiFi deployments due to scientific evidence they cause biological harm at low levels, over extended periods of time. Fatigue | Nausea | Insomnia | Depression | Behavioural problems in children | DNA damage | and cancer clusters within 500 meters of EMR Towers. Research continues, but ARPANSA research is funded by the Telco Industry and refutes any scientific evidence claiming it is not ‘proof’.

        There is no ‘proof’ EMR is safe. On the contrary – and countries are adopting the ‘precautionary principle’ when deploying EMR. Australia, is not. The UK & Sweden shield residents homes when affected by EMR.

        So um… I don’t think Seb believes wireless is the end-game… but what he does believe, well……….

    • FYI

      The towers are the for people living out side the city limits of McKay not for in city use.

  11. “Turnbull has never stated that blanket coverage Australia with a Fibre to the Premises network, as under Labor, was a goal of the Coalition.”

    Correction – Labor never intended a “blanket coverage Australia with a Fibre to the Premises network”

    Labors NBN was inherently FTTP for the city and satellite/WiFi for the country.

    To those ends, CBN is no different at all because presently – FTTN does not exist as a solution within NBN Co.

    • “Labors NBN was inherently FTTP for the city and satellite/WiFi for the country.”

      You’ve been taking lessons from Malcolm.

      Unless you consider every town in Australia with a population over 2000 to be cities, then your statement is either misinformed or a “misstatement”.

      The truth is that a majority of the people outside of the major cities would have had fibre under the Labor NBN plan. What they get now only God and Malcolm knows, although I hear that God is now out of the loop.

      • Okay – no one can explain why under Labor, NBN Co installed 4 Towers in Mackay, QLD – population 125,000.

        Under Labor, NBN Co originally were to deliver Towers to areas <1000 people.
        Mysteriously, this changed to <1000 premises. Overnight with no explanation…

        So along comes Malcolm "areas under 1000 premises will be considered for FTTN'.

        This statement turns out to be the biggest load of hogwash ever – but it got votes. As for your 2000 reference – no policy document I am aware of mentions at all the figure of 2000 'anything'. But here one thing for sure: villages around me with MORE than 1000 premises who thought they were getting FTTP…under Labor, were never going to get it – they were slated for WiFi.

        This has remained unchanged under Coalition. They both lie. They both have fleas. They both let Ericsson run NBN and now Ericsson wont let go of it.

        • And the flipside of that is that Labor also changed the plans for numerous townships under 1000 so they got FttH as well, because it was a practical reason for doing so. Places along key distribution lines, such as the south coast of NSW where the fiber run basically ran through small townships, or any detour was only a short distance.

          As we’ll never see the full rollout as intended, we’ll never know, but I have no doubt that there was a perfectly fine reason for towers in Mackay.

          Dont pick one single situation to judge this on, if you do that you’ll just get a sore head. You’ll find that there are plenty of reports you wouldnt have seen (because they werent news in your area) that complicate the whole thing.

        • “Okay – no one can explain why under Labor, NBN Co installed 4 Towers in Mackay, QLD – population 125,000.”

          I don’t know Mackay, but I do know that NBN fibre is being installed in Mackay right now. I also know that the whole town would have been covered by fibre had the original plan gone ahead.

          What the towers are doing and why, I don’t know, but it is not evidence of much of anything.

          The fact remains that the majority of people outside of the major cities would have gotten fibre under the old plan. Including those in Mackay.

        • hi. I live in mackay. Mackay was getting fttp about 1/3 already done. but some areas outside Mackay were fixed wireless.

  12. I agree with Turnbull’s claim – he’s never misstated facts, he’s just deliberately lied.

    • For once he stated the truth!

      Still looking for a $50 VDSL2 modem router with VOIP and filter….

        • So, you believe he honest believed a 1Gb connection would cost $20K a month for example?

          There seems to be two choices, lies or ignorance. Pretending to know what you are talking about and spouting crap is pretty much lying too, lying about knowing something.

          • To guarantee a 1 Gbps service is about $20,000 a month. That is a true statement.

            It is not Turnbull’s fault if Anthony Albanese does not understand how NBN Co wholesale pricing works.

          • “To guarantee a 1 Gbps service is about $20,000 a month. That is a true statement.”

            Hey mate, it’s more complex than this. The term “guarantee” was the critical aspect to this issue. Turnbull appeared to deliberately compare a “guaranteed” service with a 1:1 contention ratio to a normal consumer or business-grade service with a much more normal contention ratio. I won’t tolerate further debate on this issue. The facts are clear here. I suggest you read the original Lateline transcript if you are in doubt.

          • “MALCOLM TURNBULL: Because the – see, Anthony doesn’t understand how thing is priced. Let me explain.

            ANTHONY ALBANESE: No-one’s as smart as you, Malcolm.”

            Why didn’t Anthony Albanese put the wholesale costs into “context”. Was he not the communications minister at the time? Did he not understand how wholesale pricing works? Albanese is sitting there right across the desk and he should be able to expose Turnbull’s “lies”. It is not Turnbull’s fault if Albanese cannot debate him on those detailed matters.

            The real context is that Albanese had no idea what Turnbull was talking about. The Labor party installed a novice into a job that required somebody like Conroy to be there. The context is that Turnbull demonstrated that he understood the detail of the NBN.

          • Well that was a reply up above.. Not sure how it got down here, maybe the comment was removed.
            *ignore above*

          • The irony being, the “misleading the public” that he was accused of, has actually now been proven more credible with BT increasing the costs for the fibre connections from the FTTN network, along with the radically changed MTM rollout from what the Coalition took to the election with FTTN to everyone except the Wireless/Satellite crowd.

            Lets be fair here, MT has outwardly misrepresented the truth and blatantly lied in the past about communications policy, Anthony Albanese may have been misrepresenting the truth when he made those comments, but as the situation has since changed, it has made his comments more and more the truth of the situation.

          • Yeah was just replying to kingforce above, i think the posts got deleted so it bounced at the bottom.

          • Its a tree, and one of the lower branches has been cut off (apparently Kingforce), so everything below becomes orphaned, and this sort of thing happens. ANY reply, whether its to the original post or someone else after bounces to somewhere it shouldnt.

            Its just a glitch with WordPress, or whatever system Renai is using.

          • So, what you have just said, is that it isn’t a lie if he isn’t caught out in it immediately?
            And somehow it is someone else’s fault he lied. And it’s ok to lie if you know about something and the person you are lying to doesn’t. Great. Are these your moral values?

          • That’s the magic of language. You can provide an answer that’s technically correct, but is not in the same context as the question. This is what I would consider “not in the spirit of the game”, but I also consider “not in the spirit of the game” to be the default for politicians on both sides of the fence.

            Deliberately is the key disclaimer word. Comparing apples with oranges isn’t the same as deliberately misstating the facts.

          • Perfect example of the difference between embelishment, and misstating. Thanks, KingForce.

            $20,000 for a 1 Gbps guaranteed connection. To the average consumer, the interpretation is that this is the same as their current internet connection, only with the speed scaled up, and the cost increasing at the same rate.

            But thats not what the $20,000 for 1 Gbps represents. Its misrepresenting one thing, to suggest another. The statement itself is fine, it DOES cost $20,000 per month for a guaranteed 1 Gbps connection. In a situation the NBN isnt intended to operate under.

            And thats where its misleading, and the whole point of the accusations. For the statement to be more accurate, and better reflect reality, split that $20,000/month across everyone that would be competing for the line. In general, thats 32 users contending for the service, which means the real cost to the end user is $20,000/32, or $625/month.

            If Turnbull had made the statement that its going to cost $625/month for a 1 Gbps connection, then its neither embelishment or misstated. Its still might not an accurate cost, but its close enough that most people would be quibbling over the small detail, not the sensationalist claim.

            The $20,000/month was an embelishment, intended to undermine the reality. It wasnt a lie, but was presented to mislead, and thats whats getting people so pissed off.

    • “None of the accusations in this article are examples of Turnbull lies.”

      It may or may not be easy to prove some.

      OTOH the post by Graham referring to MT’s statement (repeated several times) claiming to have a fully costed plan, sometime around August IIRC, and when MT got to be in office it was nowhere to be seen.

      It was going to be my post if Graham had not beaten me to it as it is probably the most egregiously obvious porky.

      How long did it take for the first guess to appear post-election? And how long to get a rough, not yet fully costed plan?

      Maybe he has run out of those pardons you could buy in the middle ages…..

      • At best you could say the Coalition did not cost their plan properly and were sloppy in their work. There’s no evidence of misleading the public

        However, Mike Quigley was saying, as late as October 2013, that the NBN was “largely on budget”. A stronger case can be made that Quigley (at least) and Labor were being misleading on the final cost of an all fibre NBN.

        • Nice hypocritical argument.

          Sloppy work results in poor conclusions which then misleads the public. It’s interesting that the “sloppy work” on both sides resulted in conclusions that were favourable to their side of the argument. Lucky that.

        • “largely on budget”

          You are quoting one of Turnbull’s lies, the NBN being way over budget. The review stated that it was below budget…

  13. “Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has told radio listeners in Brisbane that he has never personally been guilty of deliberately misstating facts”

    My BS filter just exploded, Turnbull has been guilty pushing of flat out lies and misinformation for years now, a prime example is his latest claim the NBN Co “wasted 20 Billion dollars under Labor” when the senate estimates hearings clearly show that NBN Co had only spent ~5Billion dollars,

    And that’s just the latest in a long line of factually vacant statements he has made regarding the NBN!

    • SEE! A big complete waste of money that was never actually spent!

      I would have assumed it was a bigger waste of money to scrap a program several years in when it was just starting to show some results and replace it with one that isn’t going to cost much less and that will require upgrading almost immediately after being completed? :P

  14. Do pollies not understand that when they use euphemisms like “misstated” we just roll our eyes and think what a crock.

    I hope even dedicated fans of Mr.Turnbull are starting to see the light by now.

    The Minister for Communications indeed…….as I said previously at least Alston just sat on his hands.

  15. While I believe that it is quite rare that the Member for Wentworth will go so far as to deliberately attempt to grossly mislead the electorate
    ——————————————————————–
    Renai

    You still being gullible to what turnbull says

    Turnbull was invovled in the godwin grech scandal , says it all about the credibility of Turnbull

  16. I see Malcolm has been lying again, does he even realize the D/A copper loop serves 40km of copper if not more….

    I think Mr. Turnbull is already at the stage of needing to retire or face gaol or lynched..

    pointless playing blame games pointing fingers on who’s responsible for the telecommunications mess we’ve been sitting in since 1973-77…

    Once Malcolm started quoting line of sight as physical line length for copper distance he lost credibility with me, and I didn’t vote for the LNP either…

    All I know is both the LNP and ALP are to blame for the state of the copper network so stop playing the blame game as that’s been going on over the last 40 years…

    Time to stop the blame games Turnbull and fix the problem rather than let the the next poor sap fix the messes you all create…

    • I think we can blame Switkowski for the state of Telstra,s Copper Network ,Profit for beloved share holders .Liberal ideology ,rip as much money out as you can ,Let the system run down .Like Howard did with our infrastructure ,Got a massive surplus ,Future Fund ,for the self serving trough swillers !! Ziggy ,stated before he stuffed Telstra up , The network is coming to the end of it useable life ,Now he ,s with NBN ,It,s suddenly in great useable condition !! Odd how things fix themselves over time ,or when circumstances suit their ideology !!

  17. To paraphrase a well known US president – “I am not a crook!”

    Another typical day from the peanut gallery and the pollies. Someone call me when the government decides to actually start getting on w/ the job properly

  18. My take on Turnbull being dishonest is not that he openly lies (except for the fully costed plan ready to go) but that if you check the record he has almost always had an each way bet in the things he says and that everything he says is qualified. In that sense you would say he has become a proper politician but that is no compliment. His defense in this case is a perfect example of his methods. “I certainly haven’t been guilty of misstating facts”. If you take the position that he hasn’t been convicted in court of misstating facts then it is a true claim. I’m only going by the text on this so I presume the comma followed by “deliberately misstating facts” was a pause and a second statement which in the politicians world is a separate statement with its own meaning. Again, it’s true depending on the context which he will never spell out because then you could actually be held down to something.

    As to did he misrepresent his position – absolutely. I believed that he was sufficiently on top of the details of his proposal pre-election that there was at least some basis to his plan. He never made clear that he didn’t actually have anything except for a plan that wasn’t Labor’s and some rough numbers based on BT’s FTTN rollout that were only loosely accurate for Australia’s situation. He never made clear that he was getting advice from ex-Telstra people who are heavily connected to the Liberal party and one of whom he shares a boat with. He never spelled out that his actual focus was to ultimately sabotage the wholesale competition elements of NBN so that Telstra could maintain their integrated effective monopoly.

    He led everyone to believe that he had a plan ready to roll that would work faster and deliver nearly the same outcomes. That is not correct and if this wasn’t his intention then he is so incompetent in running ahead with his initial claims that he shouldn’t be trusted with his position.

    He promised a fair review of the NBN situation and a cost benefit analysis. Instead we get hack jobs that obfuscate facts so that his predetermined position is shown favourably. I call that a type of dishonesty because he was never genuine in trying to form a position based on facts.

    • The claim that he would have everyone connected to the upgraded network within 3 years was an obvious lie.

  19. One might suggest that claiming he hasn’t misstated facts, is a misstatement of facts, in itself…

  20. “Typically a version of the truth is provided — but nothing near the entire truth.”

    Lying by omission is still lying – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie#Lying_by_omission :

    ‘Lying by omission’

    ‘Also known as a continuing misrepresentation, a lie by omission occurs when an important fact is left out in order to foster a misconception. Lying by omission includes failures to correct pre-existing misconceptions. When the seller of a car declares it has been serviced regularly but does not tell that a fault was reported at the last service, the seller lies by omission. It can be compared to dissimulation.’

  21. I like to add a award for pollies. best lies in pollies , most lies, all pollies wood have there name up on a board and a star is added for each lie .and in some cases we may have to extend the length of board for all libs front bench

  22. Personally I think the “lie” word adds little value to any debate, political or otherwise, unless you have compelling strong evidence. Without evidence, its just a debating trick, a slur.

    Deliberately lying? I doubt it. Being wrong? I am pretty sure Turnbull has been, and will continue to be wrong.

    Taking advantage of a weasel-worded response so technically not misleading anyone, but having a toe in the water regarding how far you misunderstand what he said? Yea.. I could go there too.

    Deliberately misleading people? No. Although I totally reject his technical solutions, and his NBN policies, I still don’t think he deliberately misled people when he backed wireless, or didn’t restrain Jones and appeared to back his comments. And I stress, I’d never vote for the man if I lived in Wentworth, and certainly not the Liberal Party.

    Conroy on the other hand, I think, and this is only my own personal opinion, I think did deliberately mislead people when it suited him. I think he had a flexible sense of what he had to say regarding his own intentions, and his own expectations. But misleading people deliberately isn’t the same as lying.

  23. Why does he feel the need to defend himself if he thinks he is in the right?

    “These are the facts ……. btw I’m not lying about the facts”.

  24. Has anyone emailed MT with this article, or even a list, including dates of the facts on this and his history with misleading the public??

  25. All those claiming he didn’t lie, that he just worded things carefully to give a false impression, or left out pertinent facts, so that also isn’t a lie. Here’s one of the definitions of lie in the dictionary.

    “something intended or serving to convey a false impression”

    Nuff said, he has lied a lot.

  26. It’s simple. He’s just a lying scumbag piece of shit (as all other filthy corrupt politicians are), who thinks he’s king dick because he wears a suit and spins his shit.

    Denial simply means yes, they lie.

  27. of course he has never mis-stated a fact, that would imply it was accidental, and theres been nothing accidental about the way mr turnbull uses his words, they are very carefully manipulated to say what he wants them to say and not what they actually meant in the first place, so no, they are not mis-statements, they are a deliberate mis-use, a completely different thing, and his own statement is a perfect example of it.

  28. How daft the sheep are. He’s a politician, All pollies regardless of party affiliation lie, deceive, tell half truths, use weasel words and have done so for decades. That is why we don’t trust them.
    Why is stating the obvious news, in any way shape or form; and lets not forget the media’s passion for embellishment, whilst they sit in judgement of others. All this righteousness from organisations that do the same thing, and the sheep keep on falling for it. Damn Australia used to be such an intelligent country.

  29. To misstate facts you need to be dealing in facts, there is nothing more removed from Turnbull`s verbal diarrhea than facts.

  30. If a piece of manure spouted forth from Turnbull’s mouth every time he told a porkie he would have to be followed by a super scooper.

  31. To paraphrase someone at work “You could tell Malcolm was ‘misstating facts’, his lips were moving”.

  32. 16/06/2011: “Since January 2010, the number of Korean households subscribing to 100 megabits per second broadband has actually shrunk by 70,000, despite increased overall take-up of broadband.” — with the one provider. Another gained 600,000 users on 100 Mbps in the same time frame.

    21/06/2012: “There is no scope for the ACCC or anyone else to assess whether NBN Co’s planned investment in the network is prudent – or whether it is ‘gold plating’ that sets up consumers for large price hikes, as we’ve seen in the electricity sector.” — NBN Co Submission to the ACCC as of 20/06/2012: “The SAU will include commitments to the effect that […] Enhanced compliance powers will be conferred on the ACCC to ensure that NBN Co is compliant with the commitments made in the SAU in relation to prudency, operation of cost recovery etc.” The word ‘prudent’ and any variations thereof are named 53 times in the final SAU. An external report on the prudency of the thing by Analysys Mason was drafted in March 2012 and finalised in December 2012 and submitted to the ACCC as part of the SAU.

    15/05/2012: “A more rational approach would have been to contract with existing wireless and satellite providers to deliver the services.” — NBN Co has withdrawn the Interim Satellite Service from sale as of this January.

    23/07/2012: But it is certainly possible with fibre to the node to deliver wireline broadband services to many more people in the bush than would receive it under Labor’s plans. — contradicted by Fiona Nash’s Fraudbanding

    24/08/2012: “[Under] a Coalition Government devleopers like Villaworld would be free to use private sector contractors to install the fibre when they need it” — implying that under Labor they aren’t.

    22/08/2012: “That is the equivalent of $237 per household and delivered in a timeframe of four years. So compared to France Telecom, the NBN looks even more like a snail.”

    20/08/2012: “As far as Telstra is concerned a move to FTTN does not require major revisions to the deal with NBN Co (other than securing access to the D side copper)”

    21/08/2012: “A final point on maintenance: the TUSMA contract with Telstra to maintain copper in the last 7 per cent of premises has an annual expense of $290 million, with approximately $230 million of this directly attributed to the cost of upkeep for this part of the copper network. Given most estimates of the national maintenance cost of the copper are around $750 million per year, Stephen Conroy’s decision to sign this 20-year contract has locked a third of these costs in for a generation.” — Senator Conroy has not signed a 20 year contract to lock in maintenance of a large part of the copper network over either the entirety of that time period or that amount.

    16/04/2012: “It will be interesting to see what the satellite community has to say about this – is it really a risk of such a miniscule nature that Mr Quigley is right not to lose a moment’s sleep about it?” — He got called out by the ITU on being wrong on that.

    20/07/2012: “Second, even if the NBN did overbuild the HFC why would you assume that makes the HFC redundant?” — Rod Tucker and Paul Budde, both previously cited by Turnbull: “The power consumption curves for DSL, HFC and FTTN cease prior to 2020 because we believe these technologies have a limited ability to scale and meet future increases in bandwidth requirements.” and “The end of HFC and FttN networks is approaching”: “The shared nature of these networks and the extra cost involved in providing consistent services at higher speeds to mass markets makes HFC increasingly less competitive with FttH networks.”

    If you’re wondering why there’s none from either later in 2012 or anything more recent, it’s because no person has that much time in the world.

    • Pity you didnt go just a few months further to November 2012.

      http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/reporting-the-real-issues-about-the-nbn-or-why-lateline-missed-the-point

      “The reason it is cheaper and faster to build is very simple. The most expensive and time consuming part of building an FTTP network is the last mile and especially taking the fibre into existing premises. FTTN takes the fibre out to the street cabinet and then uses the existing copper line to the customer’s premises for the last part of the network. As a consequence there is no disturbance of the customer’s premise and a massive savings in civil works and labour costs. In a relatively high wage economy like Australia, the savings of FTTN will be even greater.”

      Completely bypasses the fact that the labor will still need to be done at some point, and in our relatively high wage economy, and the inevitable pay increases between now and 2025 (or whenever he expected FttN to be upgraded) the labor costs (the most expensive and time consuming part) is going to inevitably cost more than it does today.

      Result being that the claimed savings will inevitably be undone at some point. Somewhere in the middle, “Not even Senator Conroy can suspend the laws of economics” but apparently its not an issue to The Turnbull. Good read that one, theres plenty of misrepresentation going on. He asks what speed each rollout can do for example, and cites that FttN in the UK is doing (up to) 80 Mbps, then goes on to cite exactly no figure for FttH…

      That one post you could probably pull out a dozen embelishments quink, have a read :)

      • There are no savings using FttN in Australia unless you are Telstra, it’s as simple as that.

        Once the Telstra copper deal is done and included in the overall cost, I predict the CBN will actually cost more than the NBN (and that’s not even taking the “Will need to upgrade 5 years after being finished” of Ziggy in to account).

  33. “All I can say is they’ll get it a lot sooner under our Government than they ever would have done under Labor. After six years of Labor’s NBN nothing was built in Griffith and in fact only two percent of the network overall was constructed. So the project as you know was massively behind schedule,” the Minister said. “… the exact timetable is something that the company will set in due course but all I can tell is that it will be completed much sooner than it would have been done had Labor stayed in government and continued with their plan.”

    South Brisbane covers a large part of Griffith. South Brisbane has Telstra FTTP. Under Labour South Brisbane was due to be connected to NBN by around about now. I understand it was originally part of the plan for Telstra to sell it’s South Brisbane FTTP network to NBN. Now I don’t know what happened to those plans. In everything I’ve read about people talking in Griffith about NBN, I’ve not seen one mention of South Brisbane FTTP.

    So, in theory it’s true, NBN did not build the Telstra FTTP in South Brisbane. In practice “nothing was built in Griffith” is wrong. However “All I can say is they’ll get it a lot sooner under our Government than they ever would have done under Labor.” and “it will be completed much sooner than it would have been done had Labor stayed in government and continued with their plan.” clearly is not true for the South Brisbane part of Griffith.

    The damn things been built, switch it over already.

  34. “Turnbull further added that Abbott had “never lied” to him personally. ”

    Inherent in this claim is the suggestion that Malcolm Turnbull can flawlessly detect when he’s being lied to… this then begs the question, did he know that Godwin Gretch was lying to him, or did Godwin Gretch tell him the truth about the emails and Malcolm decided to use them anyway?

  35. It doesn’t matter that he lies or that he lies about lying – there is absolutely no come back for any politician who lies to the Australian public.

    We’re the ones giving them carte blanche to do this. Until we vote out all sitting members caught doing this they will continue to lie their arses off.

    They have enormous power, wielded incompetently and for venal reasons. Judge them harshly and act on those judgements.

  36. Well, I guess you can’t have misstated if its a fact.

    But were they all facts?

  37. The problem is that he believes everything that he has ever said is the truth. Therefore he in his own system, has never told a lie.

    How do you tell when a politician is lying? Their lips are moving.

  38. But did he have sex with Monica Lewinsky ?

    I find it really ironic that he’s even refuting that he lied.

    I used to work for him (and David Spence) at OzEmail, I know damned well he’s better educated on the needs of future broadband than he’s telling us we need currently. There’s just no way he’s not full of it and knows it.

    Many projects were put on hold even back in those days due to substandard network capacity or bandwidth just being too expensive, and people needed to look to the USA to actually do business. Nothing has changed along these lines other than we now have a lot more people connected.

    I fail to see how he thinks his comments of the past years have not misled people who aren’t in the industry.

    • It’s “up to 25Mbps” and actually, they delivered in record time. You already have it. It’s called ADSL2+.

  39. It is always difficult to pin down a lie. Dishonesty, on the other hand, eventually becomes evident. Malcolm has often been dishonest, as demonstrated by many here

  40. Turnbull ,A swarmy smooth talking lawyer from the big end of town ,His sense of self importance ,weighs him down !! But he did invent the internet !!

  41. Turnbull was asked when residents of Griffith would be able to connect to the National Broadband Network begun under Labor (Delimiter currently refers to the significantly altered project as the Coalition’s Broadband Network or CBN). In response,Our site tell about how to cleaning thing.

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