Mr TURNBULL (Wentworth—Prime Minister) (14:49): I really thank the honourable member for the question. That was very generous of him—this is the question he has been nurturing for the two years I was the communications minister and had not been able to ask it. I am grateful for the question. Let us be quite clear about this. The National Broadband Network project was undertaken by the previous Labor government after, literally, 11 weeks' consideration. It was a shockingly reckless failure of policy and process. When they embarked on the project, they had no idea what it would cost and they had no idea how long it would take. There was no way that they could have known that, because the reality is that they had not done their homework. They committed the Commonwealth to a staggeringly ambitious project— Ms Claydon interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member of that Newcastle will cease interjecting. Mr TURNBULL: costing $43 billion, but they had no idea whether it would be that much all much more. It was in its own way the craziest thing done by the Labor Party in six years of misgovernment. As is the lot of the Liberal and national parties, we have inherited this mess and we have had to clean it up. Ms O'Neil interjecting— Mr Conroy interjecting— The SPEAKER: The members for Hotham and Charlton, this is your final warning. Mr TURNBULL: Most bad projects only get worse; this one is getting better. It is getting better because we changed the management, we changed the board, we gave them the flexibility to get on with the job. It will be completed for $30 billion less and between six and eight years sooner than it would have been, had Labor's original plan been continued with That is not my forecast—that is the forecast of the management of nbn co who for the first time actually know what this project will cost. The reality is that at the time of the last election the nbn co management, and therefore the Labor government, did not know how much it was costing them to connect premises with fibre. The information they had— Mr Clare: Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order on relevance. The SPEAKER: There is no point of order. Mr Clare: Will you rule out the cost of HFC going up and blowing out— The SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat. There is no point of order—that was an abuse of the point of order process and it will not be repeated. Mr TURNBULL: At the time of the election the former management under the Labor Party simply did not know what it was costing. It turns out that, far from costing $2,400 per premises to connect them with fibre, it was costing them, and still costs, about $3,600—and to that, of course, you have to add another $700 for the capitalised cost of the lease of the ducts from Telstra. (Time expired)