From ItWire:
Malcolm Turnbull’s Parliamentary Secretary Minister Paul Fletcher has admitted that the Coalition’s estimate of the cost of Labor’s NBN was ‘perhaps a little high’.
Oh … THAT $34 billion! In the lead up to the last Federal Election, Malcolm Turnbull and the Coalition incessantly said that the real cost of Labor’s NBN would be in the order of $90 billion, compared to Labor’s own figure of $39 billion.
Turnbull’s Assistant Minister has now said that NBN Co’s internal review of Labor’s NBN costed it at $56 billion, still high but much closer to Labor’s figure than the inflated estimate the Coalition took to the election.
Fletcher was speaking at the TechLeaders 2014 forum for IT journalists being held on the Gold Coast, where he gave the keynote address. Most of his talk was a spirited defence of the Government’s NBN policy.
When asked by iTWire about the disparity between the Coalition’s $90 billion estimate of a FTTP network and the much lower NBN Co estimate (made by the management team the Coalition had put into place) of $56 billion, the best Fletcher could say was that the Coalition estimate “may have been a little high.”
Two sets of liars in parliament. Shock!
