Turnbull reveals Coalition broadband policy via Q&A

Stuart Corner
Friday, 22 July 2011 09:57

Opinion and Analysis

Whether they were intended to be such or not, shadow communications minister Malcolm Turnbull's pronouncements this week on the future of the NBN under a Coalition Government have been seized on and reported and analysed as being a major announcement of Coalition policy. If that was the intent, the way in which they were delivered was somewhat curious.

Turnbull's statements were made at a lunch in Sydney hosted by the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA). They were made not in a formal speech but in a Q&A session, and many of them delivered off-the-cuff in response to questions from the floor.

It is not even clear just how much the 'announcements' were pre-planned. Turnbull said early in the interview. "I'm happy to talk about the NBN. I think we are supposed to be talking about the NBN, but I am happy to talk about other things."

For those not present the only way to access these 'policy statements' is to read reports and commentary or listen to a podcast of the 45 minute session on Turnbull's web site. Why do it this way? I suspect to float these ideas in front of the public before they become embedded in an official broadband policy so that they can be revised and refined as needed.

Trouble is, doing it this way leaves the 'policy statements' open to more misinterpretation than usual. Take Turnbull's comments on a cost-benefit analysis study of the NBN by the Productivity Commission, for example. The Coalition has in the past been very vocal in demanding such from the Productivity Commission. However the analysis that Turnbull promised this week was not what the Coalition and others have called for and which has been dismissed by others as being impossible. They have pointed out that no such study has been conducted anywhere in the world.

The earlier argument was that the Government should not embark on the massively expensive NBN without some estimate of the economic benefits flowing from the ubiquitous access to high speed broadband it promises to deliver.

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