The former Telstra director Bill Scales will audit the process that led to Labor’s National Broadband Network policy and the establishment of NBN Co, the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, announced on Friday.
Scales, who also served as chairman of the Productivity Commission, “brings a wealth of experience in public policy and telecommunications to the role”, Turnbull said.
The audit’s terms of reference stretch from April 2008, when former the communications minister Stephen Conroy issued a request for proposals for an NBN solution, up to May 2010, when the NBN implementation study was released.
In particular, it will examine “the origin and basis for NBN Co’s mandate to run fibre to the premises (FTTP) to 90% to 93% of Australian premises” and “the approach taken in regard to obtaining cost benefit or independent reviews of the project”.
The Coalition has been critical of the cost of FTTP, and after coming to office in September 2013, scrapped it in favour of using a mix of technologies, including fibre, copper and coaxial cable, depending on what is “most economically efficient” in each area, Turnbull has said.
In a statement, Turnbull said that Scales would consult “legally available information”, ruling out access to the previous government’s cabinet documents. The Abbott government has come under fire for handing over Labor cabinet documents to a royal commission into 2009’s home insulation scheme, breaking a tradition that such documents should be kept secret.
The audit, which will report by 7 July, will run alongside other inquiries into the NBN policy, including a review into NBN Co’s internal governance and a cost-benefit analysis of the project. Two other inquiries announced by the government, a strategic review of the NBN and a survey into broadband quality around Australia, have been completed.
A spokesman for Jason Clare, Labor’s shadow communications minister, said Turnbull “seems to have an unhealthy obsession with Stephen Conroy, and fighting old wars. The people of Australia want him to build the NBN, not play politics.”
