Libs' latest NBN bashing: Big on blame, short on Liberal liability

The way forward is to keep the NBN publicly owned and continue investing in fibre expansion. Instead, the Liberal Party is damaging the country's digital future by using it as a political football, writes Paul Budde.

FOR OVER 15 years, I have watched the National Broadband Network (NBN) become one of Australia's most politicised infrastructure projects.

What was supposed to be a game-changing, future-proof national interest project has instead been used as a political football, with disastrous consequences for the country’s digital future.

The Liberal Party’s decision to abandon the Labor Party’s original fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) plan in favour of a multi-technology mix (MTM) was, in my view, one of the worst technology policy decisions in modern Australia. We are still paying the price today.

NBN remains a political football

A new revelation published in The Guardian shows that the NBN is much more expensive than what the Coalition let us believe in 2013.

Liberal Party’s NBN failure

I have been a vocal critic of the way the NBN has been handled by successive governments, particularly the reckless decisions made by the Liberal Party after they took power in 2013. (See this Independent Australia article in 2016 and this piece in 2021.)

Labor’s original plan was simple: lay fibre to 96 per cent of Australian premises and provide a robust, scalable broadband network that would serve the nation for decades. However, the Liberals scrapped that plan, opting instead for a multi-technology mix (MTM) approach that relied on outdated copper infrastructure and hybrid-fibre-coaxial (HFC) technology.

The Libs promised it would be "cheaper and faster." It was neither. What we got was a second-rate network that needed costly upgrades almost immediately.

Billions of dollars were wasted trying to patch up old infrastructure rather than investing in the best technology from the start. As I have argued for years, the decision to use HFC was always a politically motivated cost-cutting exercise and it has left Australia lagging behind other developed nations in terms of broadband quality and speeds.

By the time the Labor Party returned to Government in 2022, it was clear that a full-fibre solution was still the ultimate goal. But the damage had already been done. A decade had been wasted and Australia’s broadband future had been compromised by short-sighted political decisions.

Ongoing political battles over the NBN

Even now, after all the failures of the MTM strategy, the Liberal Party cannot resist using the NBN as a political weapon. The Shadow Communications Minister recently launched yet another attack on the NBN, accusing the Government of "delivery failure".

She pointed to a decline in satellite and fixed wireless customers and blamed the Labor Government for price hikes. Yet, what she conveniently ignores is that many of these problems were set in motion by her own party’s disastrous policies while in Government.

Furthermore, these issues have been largely resolved — the fixed wireless network has been upgraded; Starlink now has about 250,000 users in Australia, offering a great alternative. I would think that the Liberals should welcome this new level of competition, with more low Earth orbit (LEO) systems becoming available over the next decade.

NBN's half-year results show solid performance but challenges remain

NBN Co has released its financial and operational results for the first half of FY25, reporting steady revenue growth, ongoing network upgrades and efficiency gains.

The current Communications Minister responded by pointing out that under the leadership of Peter Dutton, the Liberal Party is reviving the same anti-NBN rhetoric we saw under Tony Abbott.

There is also growing concern that the Opposition’s recent criticisms signal an agenda to privatise NBN Co. The Labor Government has reaffirmed its commitment to keeping the NBN publicly owned and investing in regional and rural connectivity — a critical move after years of neglect by the previous Government.

The question of privatisation

The biggest question now is whether the Liberals are laying the groundwork to privatise the NBN. While they deny it, their broader arguments about NBN Co’s financial losses and the need for "commercial sustainability" suggest otherwise.

History has shown that the Liberal Party is no fan of public ownership. If it wins the next Federal Election, it is not hard to imagine the Libs pushing for a sell-off, which would almost certainly lead to higher prices and reduced investment in regional areas.

Labor, on the other hand, has made it clear that the NBN is a national asset that should remain in public hands. It has committed $3 billion to expand fibre access and undo some of the damage caused by the MTM approach.

Labor's Communications Minister has highlighted the success of fixed wireless upgrades initiated in 2022, which have improved speeds and reduced outages. This is the kind of forward-thinking investment we should have had all along.

NBN Co rising above challenges as demand for fibre grows

Australia's national broadband company is rising above financial challenges amid a growing demand for fibre connection.

Political sabotage

I have been following and commenting on the NBN since its inception, and it is frustrating to see the same political games being played over and over again.

The Liberal Party’s decision to abandon full-fibre deployment in 2013 was a monumental mistake. It set Australia back more than a decade and wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on an inferior network. Rather than admitting its failures, the party is again using the NBN as a political punching bag, potentially setting the stage for privatisation.

For the foreseeable future, the only way forward is to keep the NBN publicly owned and continue investing in fibre expansion.

If it truly supports the NBN, the Liberal Party must stop undermining it for political gain and acknowledge that a strong, publicly owned broadband network is essential for Australia’s economic and social development. Anything less is just another round of political sabotage.

Paul Budde is an Independent Australia columnist and managing director of Paul Budde Consulting, an independent telecommunications research and consultancy organisation. You can follow Paul on Twitter @PaulBudde.