Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull has said the Liberal party won’t pull down any existing NBN infrastructure if it wins the next election.
“You can be sure that we won’t start ripping things up (if elected),” he said yesterday at the AB+F Corporate and Business Banking Forum, as reported by Fairfax.
However, he also said that it is “simply reckless and irresponsible” of the Government to refuse to perform a cost benefit analysis.
“The Gillard government must urgently undertake a thorough cost benefit analysis of the NBN,” he said. “It’s stubborn failure to do so can only lead us to conclude that it does not want to know what it fears it will reveal.”
“It will either have to charge higher prices from the customer, or for political reasons… not be able to generate adequate returns and end up with a value below its $43 billion.”
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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