Mr Turnbull says that Australian families and businesses don’t need a first rate NBN, but he’s happy to use taxpayer money to look after his own suburb.”

'Everything proceeded smoothly.'


Article heading image for Mr Turnbull says that Australian families and businesses don’t need a first rate NBN, but he’s happy to use taxpayer money to look after his own suburb.”

Image: Getty

Malcolm Turnbull has had both his Point Piper residence and Kirribilli House hooked up to the National Broadband Network.

Officials in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet revealed on Monday night that the Prime Minister's home had been hooked up to the fastest speeds possible.

It's come without delay and without connection issues, issues prevalent throughout the NBN's rollout.

PM&C first assistant secretary Paula Ganley told Estimates the process went down fairly quickly.

"We were in negotiations just to ensure that by connecting the NBN.... to make sure there would be no interruption to any of the security facilities or anything else when it was connected," she said.

"The connection went ahead quite quickly after that and it was on the 8th of December that the connection actually took place."

Ganley's department was asked by the PM to make sure it went down "smoothly".

"We were already in discussions when we were here last time with NBN because the prime minister asked us to make sure it was connected to Point Piper but our office just had to make sure that everything proceeded smoothly," she said.

Turnbull has previously disputed the need for such a high speed.

"Do households need to have - will they value (or) will they have any use for very high speeds of 100 megabits per second and higher and it’s difficult to identify the applications that would need that," he told ABC in 2013.

It's received some criticism from opposition leader Bill Shorten.

"Mr Turnbull says that Australian families and businesses don’t need a first rate NBN, but he’s happy to use taxpayer money to look after his own suburb," he said on Tuesday.

27 February 2018




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