Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull's Point Piper mansion and the official Sydney residence of the PM in Kirribilli have both been connected to the National Broadband Network.



Officials in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) revealed in Estimates on Monday night that the prime minister's palatial home in Point Piper had been connected to the NBN via the hybrid-fibre coaxial (HFC) cable technology on December 8.

NBN has been struggling with connection issues, which has resulted in a doubling of complaints to the telecommunications industry ombudsman in the last year, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has been examining customer complaints around connection delays for the NBN.



However, Turnbull, who was the minister responsible for the government's current policy until he took over as prime minister in 2015, had no issue connecting to the NBN.

Paula Ganley, first assistant secretary in PM&C, told Estimates on Monday night that the connection happened quickly and smoothly in December.

"We were in negotiations just to ensure that by connecting the NBN.... to make sure there would be no interruption to any of the security facilities or anything else when it was connected," she said.

"The connection went ahead quite quickly after that and it was on the 8th of December that the connection actually took place."

The prime minister also escaped the up-to nine-month delay in new connections to the NBN on the cable network instituted late last year. Ganley revealed the prime minister asked the department to make sure his connection went ahead.

"We were already in discussions when we were here last time with NBN because the prime minister asked us to make sure it was connected to Point Piper but our office just had to make sure that everything proceeded smoothly," she said.

The department had one discussion with NBN Co, and it took just one appointment to get his connection set up.