Conroy declares war on The Aus over NBN

James Riley
Thursday, 21 October 2010 10:37

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

The Australian newspaper was "waging a war" against the National Broadband Network and against the Gillard Government, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has charged.

In an extraordinary attack on the newspaper on ABC television's Lateline, Senator Conroy accused it of trying to "destroy the NBN in the eyes of Australians" and of running a campaign of "falsehoods" to create uncertainty about the project.

Further, he said the campaign against the NBN was ultimately aimed at unseating the government.

"I think it's fair to say that the campaigning that they're doing against the NBN doesn't meet any journalistic balance, it doesn't meet any journalistic accountability, if you were to look at the actual factual substance of the story," Senator Conroy said.

"And it's very disappointing to see a newspaper losing its way in this way."

Senator Conroy is known to have been deeply angry about a front-page story in The Australian just two days before the Federal election that claimed the NBN would require householders to spend up to $6,000 on re-wiring their homes to get use the new network. He says the newspaper has repeated the charge, despite knowing it to be a false claim.

"They have been maintaining this campaign to try and create uncertainty, to create falsehoods about the NBN and they are knowingly doing it," he said.

"You can only come to the conclusion that they are determined to destroy the NBN in the eyes of Australians because it was an important factor in us winning government."

"And you've seen the tantrum they threw after the election, and this just is part of an ongoing tantrum by The Australian newspaper about the outcome of the election."

Meanwhile, Senator Conroy continued to argue that Opposition communication spokesman Malcolm Turnbull was trying to delay construction of the NBN by calling for the Productivity Commission to conduct a full cost-benefit analysis of the project.

He said an analysis was only as good as the assumptions that were fed into the model on which it was based - and that those assumptions could be highly subjective, limiting the value of such a report's findings.