A most curious post appeared this evening on Malcolm Turnbull’s website, calling for answers from Stephen Conroy over the rollout numbers for the National Broadband Network (NBN) in greenfields estates.
| Some Simple Questions for Stephen Conroy |
You really want to play this game hey Malcolm?
How about all the questions from Conroy you repeatedly refuse to answer:
- What international examples of FTTN-style broadband deployments do you consider most pertinent to the Australian situation, and why?
- How long do you estimate it would take, if the Coalition wins the next Federal Election, to deploy FTTN to more than 90 percent of the Australian population?
- What, specifically, do you estimate would be the cost difference between deploying FTTN and FTTH as part of the NBN rollout?
- Do you consider it possible to re-work the current Telstra/NBN contract to focus on FTTN instead of FTTH, and how long do you estimate this would take?
- What broad details of this contract would need to change, and how long do you anticipate the ACCC would take to approve a modified version?
- Do you have a long-term plan to upgrade a FTTN-style network to a FTTH-style network, or a medium-term plan to allow ad-hoc upgrades of this network to FTTH?
- What do you consider to be the time frame on which a FTTN-style network would continue to be used without an upgrade to FTTH? Will there, in fact, be a need to upgrade in the long-term to FTTH? On what evidence do you have these beliefs?
- How would you address the claim that FTTN is a short to medium-term technology that will be superceded over the next several decades by FTTH, and that Australia should only be investing for the long-term when it comes to this kind of telecommunications infrastructure? On what evidence do you feel this way?
Shall I remind you of all the questions I asked you repeatedly one evening some weeks ago on Twitter, that you refused to answer?
TWEET: “@TurnbullMalcolm How much for FTTN? How much to upgrade to FTTH? If total not less than NBN, yours is not cheaper or better! #auspol #nbn”
TWEET: “@TurnbullMalcolm @bradsprigg And you keep talking about price, yet you won’t give even a ballpark costing…”
TWEET: “@TurnbullMalcolm Tell us how much your plan costs and how much the later upgrade will cost…compare apples with apples mate… #auspol #nbn”
TWEET: “@TurnbullMalcolm @ABCtech Only if you tell us how much FTTN will cost, and how much the subsequent upgrade will cost…”
TWEET: “@TurnbullMalcolm You are deliberately obfuscating…how much to deploy YOUR solution, and the later upgrade to FTTP? Stop avoiding it…”
TWEET: “@TurnbullMalcolm @ABCtech For as long as you avoided the question I have asked you many times, you are being evasive and disingenuous…”
TWEET: “@TurnbullMalcolm That’s not what I’m asking you…why do you twist and turn every time someone asks you for the price?”
How about last night?
TWEET: “@TurnbullMalcolm @sortius …as opposed to a policy released versus a policy hidden? When will you have the balls to release it?”
TWEET: “@TurnbullMalcolm @sortius Time to release your policy and stop being condescending? #auspol #nbn”
In Turnbull’s recent George Winterton Lecture performance, he declares an “urgent need for honesty”, and makes the statement:
“There is almost nothing more important to good government and our nation’s future than the quality, honesty and clarity of political discourse: how we explain policy challenges and trade-offs, and educate voters about the constraints we have to work within…how we express our position, our basis for reaching it and why it differs from that of our opponents if this is the case…how we communicate changes in policy and their implications.”
Yet he can’t be honest and answer reasonable questions about his alternative NBN policy, or have the courage to release his policy for comparison.
Dishonest. Disingenuous. Hypocritical.
Or is he just taking the piss?
Either way, we deserve better.
He said so in his speech.