The latest weekly progress report shows NBN brownfield activations have hit their lowest levels over the past thirty reporting weeks.

In the past fortnight, NBNCo has activated an average of 9,800 brownfield premises per week. This is down from the 32,500 per week average for November 2017.

This should be known as “the Malcolm effect”.

The slowdown, in the midst of the peak rollout period, is depriving NBNCo of revenue to pay down construction costs. Instead, NBNCo is having to draw on taxpayers to fork out more - potentially hundreds of millions - to cover for Turnbull’s mistakes.

Despite the bizarre broadsides being fired off by Mitch Fifield about the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) this week, the costly 6 month pause of HFC activations, and the December 2017 NBN pricing discounts, should see a significant reduction in TIO complaints in the next reporting period.

Labor notes Malcolm Turnbull is yet to come clean about the cost of his HFC rollout delay. Regardless, we will continue to hold Turnbull accountable for his mismanagement of the NBN.