Minister Mitch Fifield backs NBN project and timeline after only a third of construction targets met

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The communications minister, Mitch Fifield, has rejected suggestions the national broadband network is in crisis, after leaked internal documents found the fibre-to-the-node roll-out had met only one third of its construction targets.

The NBN Co documents showed that the fibre to the node (FTTN) roll-out was “significantly delayed” and costs had blown out.



By 12 February NBC Co had expected 94,200 “construction completions” of its FTTN network but had managed only 29,000.

Final designs for FTTN roll-outs were also behind schedule. Of more than 1.4m homes targeted, just under 663,000 had had their final designs completed.

Malcolm Turnbull says he complained to ABC heads about reporting on NBN Read more

The document noted the gaps between construction and design completions and the targets set by NBN Co were increasing.

The cost of FTTN roll-out per household has increased to $1,366, 23% above target.

Delays in power approvals and shortages in obtaining materials contributed to the time and cost blow-outs, the report said.

Fifield backed the project and its timeline.

“The NBN is on track to meet its targets for the financial year, within the budget set out in the company’s corporate plan,” he said. “Any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong.”

The minister claimed the NBN under Labor was one of the “most poorly managed projects in the history of the commonwealth”.

“The company [NBN Co] has met its targets for the past six quarters in a row,” Fifield said. “This is in stark contrast to management under Labor, when the company had barely managed to connect 50,000 users after four years.”

The chief financial officer of NBN Co, Stephen Rue, would not be drawn on the specifics of the leaked report but said he was confident the project would run on time and on budget.

“We are very comfortable that we will meet or exceed it,” he told ABC Radio on Monday.

In August, shortly before the then communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, successfully challenged Tony Abbott for the prime ministership, NBN Co announced a cost blow-out of up to $15bn for the project.

Malcolm Turnbull is to blame for $15bn NBN cost blowout, says Labor Read more

Turnbull had said opening up the NBN to mixed technology such as copper networks and satellite would reduce costs and improve NBN service delivery.

In late 2014, after announcing that the government had struck a deal with telcos over the use of copper networks, Turnbull said: “This should be seen as a win-win: a win for the taxpayer, a win for the consumers, a win for National Broadband Network and for Telstra shareholders ... and the project will be completed much sooner and at much less cost.”

A year later, the government struck another deal with Telstra to pay the telco to fix the copper network it initially bought for $11bn to improve the NBN, contributing to the $15bn increase.

Labor’s communications spokesman, Jason Clare, said the NBN roll-out under Turnbull had been an “epic fail”.



“The cost of it has doubled under Malcolm Turnbull, the time it’s going to take to build the NBN is twice what Malcolm Turnbull promised,” Clare said. “He has made a shocking mess.

“He’s got no one else to blame but himself.

“Almost everything he promised, he has broken.”