LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Greg Hoy reporting, and a short time ago I spoke to the Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull.

Malcolm Turnbull, good to have you in.

MALCOLM TURNBULL, COMMUNICATIONS MINISTER: Great to be here.

LEIGH SALES: Why did you ask the entire board of the NBN Co to resign?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I offered them to offer their resignations, not to resign, to offer to resign. And that was so the Government had the maximum flexibility in terms of restructuring the NBN board in the light of a change of Government and a change of policy.

LEIGH SALES: So will you be accepting the resignations of those people who have offered them?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think the expectation is that we will accept the resignations of some of them but not all of them.

LEIGH SALES: So you want some sort of continuity then for this transitional period and some corporate knowledge?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: That's a very good assumption. I don't want to comment on it any further, on the board any further because it is a matter for Cabinet. And the Cabinet could decide to accept all of the resignations, but people have been speculating that it would be good to have some continuity and that's a reasonable speculation. But I can't confirm it.

LEIGH SALES: It will be hard for viewers to not assume that you think the board's done a bad job if you've asked everyone to offer their resignations?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I can understand people coming to that view but it's not correct. I'm not making any judgment about the board, there will be a strategic review of the NBN's business situation at the moment, and how much is this project really going to cost, how long is it really going to take on the current specifications and what can we do about it? What are our options? That's the critical piece of work the new board and new management will undertake. And there will be an audit of the management and governance of the NBN Co in the past. I'm not prejudging any of that work. I publicly thank the board for their effort; I've thanked and acknowledged the very hard work of the chairman Siobhan McKenna and the executive Mike Quigley who have had to deal with these big project in difficult circumstances.

LEIGH SALES: We've heard a lot about targets and deadlines slipping with the NBN. Were the targets unrealistic all along, or were the targets realistic and the NBN Co management just not up to meeting them?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think the targets were essentially political. I don't think they were ever realistic, to be frank with you. You can take two views, I suppose. You can say they were always unrealistic or some people thought they were, with the benefit of hindsight, naively or over optimistically thought they were realistic. But the fact is they've slipped enormously. I mean if you look at the forecast for premises passed by fibre as at June 2014, the end of June 2010 they said there would be 2.7 million premises, in August 2012 they said 1.3 million and then in June they said it would only be 981,000. A figure that Anthony Albanese kept secret. This was in the draft corporate plan that he refused to release, you might remember. And then in their latest forecasts, which is just this month, they've said it will be 729,000. So in the space of a few years the forecast has dropped by nearly 75 per cent.

LEIGH SALES: To play devil's advocate, it's a very big project, the likes of which have never been attempted before. Even people if you're renovating your kitchen you know the deadline slips and the amount of money blows out. Is it not something that is understandable given the process?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well deadlines do slip, but it's really incumbent on governments and in particular, to be very realistic about their forecasts and this is what the strategic review is designed to do. I'm not interested, I've said to the staff of the NBN Co today, I'm not interested in being told good news that they think might conform with my political views or my political agenda. I simply want to know the plain, unvarnished facts. I want to know the good news and the bad news. And we've got to get out of this sort of culture of telling politicians what they want to hear. Now, what I need and the Government needs and the people of Australia need, we need to know what is a very prudent, conservative, realistic view as to what this project will cost and how long it will take on the current specifications. And then with a similarly conservative and prudent view, what are our options for speeding this project up to get it completed more quickly, and of course at less cost to the taxpayer and therefore more affordably to the consumer.

LEIGH SALES: Before the election you stated unequivocally that the Coalition would be able to deliver the network faster, cheaper, better. You didn't say I think we can deliver it faster, cheaper better but we need a strategic review to make sure that is the case.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I have no doubt we can deliver it. The approach we've described will undoubtedly deliver it sooner and cheaper and more affordably but the question is how much sooner, how much cheaper and how much more affordably. We've put some well considered forecast estimates on our policy but we were on the outside looking in Leigh, that's why we've set out the strategic review in our policy. So that we can absolutely nail it, and get the facts in a very precise way.

LEIGH SALES: We know that your fibre to the node plan requires the use of the existing copper network; will you be undertaking some sort of review to check on the state of that copper network and exactly what its capabilities are?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: We have a lot of information about that but the short answer is yes and there will be VDSL trials being undertaken very soon.

LEIGH SALES: Are they happening now?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: They've not. NBN Co has not undertaken them yet but we've certainly asked them to do so. The NBN Co I might say has asked the Labor Government over a year ago if it could use fibre to the node in multidwelling buildings, apartment buildings. And the Labor Government for political and ideological reasons said no. Regardless of the economics you have got to take a fibre optic cable into every single flat, apartment, whether it's on the top of the tallest tower or you know, in a smaller apartment building you've got to take it there. Because we, the Labor Party, want to say every premises is going to get fibre. Now, so the fibre to the node, you know the proposition that fibre to the node is somehow or other apathetical to the NBN Co, the management was actually advocating that for multidwelling units, as I said, over a year ago and repeatedly since.

LEIGH SALES: Before you go, I just want to ask you as somebody who is very knowledgeable about climate change and interested in that area. The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change will release its 5th assessment report next week and we know the planet is warm bug the pace of warming has slowed over the past 15 years or so. Does that mean that we should be less concerned about climate change?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well no, I think we should be always be concerned about climate change and, you know, the government, the Abbott Government is concerned about climate change. And we have a commitment to cut our emissions, which was a bipartisan commission to by five per cent as against 2,000 levels by 2020.

LEIGH SALES: If it's slowing why do we need to be as concerned about it?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Let's read the IPCC report. We're talking about a document that hasn't been published yet and as we've seen in the media, there have been some inaccurate accounts of what's in it already.

LEIGH SALES: Do you think the IPCC is still a credible body, there's obviously been a lot of controversy around it in recent years?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I think it's very credible. It's not immune to criticism. It certainly would be, I wouldn't agree with those who say it has no credibility. I think there are many voices in the climate change debate, some of them have more or less credibility. I think the IPCC has a great deal of credibility because it is, after all, simply gathering together the collected research of hundreds if not thousands of scientists and trying to present a distilled consensus view. There is an argument, and a legitimate one, that trying to draw a consensus out of all of these different opinions is, in itself, distorting. But there's certainly the qualifications of the people on the IPCC are very high and very distinguished.

LEIGH SALES: Back in 2009 you were very critical of the Coalition's climate change policy. It hasn't changed much since then. Can we assume then that you're still not that much of a fan of direct action?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: You can assume that as a member of the Cabinet I support all of our policies, including the direct action policy.

LEIGH SALES: Thank you for your time.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Thank you.