Joint with Jim Chalmers MP, Shadow Minister for Finance. 

The NBNCo Chairman has today attempted to carefully walk away from his claim the NBN could achieve a sale value of $50 billion, days after responses to a Senate Committee exposed his assertion for what it always was: third-rate nonsense.

In a letter to the AFR, the Chairman again failed to offer any evidence, and began backtracking by saying it’s all too hard.

Yet speaking before a Senate Committee, alongside fellow HFC supporter Mitch Fifield, the Chairman seemed quite confident:

Mr Switkowski: “I could certainly generate - and do generate - figures around $50 billion for the value of this company in the early 2020s.”

Labor again calls on the Chairman to disclose any evidence of analysis he generated to support the statement he made.

A failure to do so would not only affirm his claim cannot be substantiated, but, more concerningly, indicate that the figures were never generated to begin with.

This pattern of misleading the public about the multi-technology mix follows a long and unfortunate trend which all began with the Coalition’s 2013 Strategic Review – a review with such contempt for the truth that consumers and taxpayers are still paying the price for its errors to this day.