Malcolm Turnbull‘s family mansion has just been hooked up to the NBN, folks, and you better believe he’s opted for that premium 100mbps speed package, despite previously arguing that Australian families would have no such need for that kind of bandwidth.
According to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C), Turnbull’s Point Piper home was connected to the network via hybrid-fibre coaxial technology on December 8. While most pending connections have been delayed for six months, old mate Malcolm’s went through just fine.
“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,” first assistant secretary in PM&C, Paula Ganley, told Estimates.
“The connection went ahead quite quickly after that and it was on the 8th of December that the connection actually took place.”
Introduced last year, the delays aim to smooth out the network’s existing connection and speed issues, rather than steaming ahead with further installations. According to Ganley, Turnbull asked the department to make sure his connection went ahead regardless.
“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.
The mansion and Kirribilli House are both on the highest NBN plan, which grants speeds of up to 100Mbps down, and 40Mbps up. That equates to a download speed of 12.5 megabytes per second.
But Malcolm, remember when you were the shadow communications minister and argued that fibre-to-the-home connections were overkill, and that people wouldn’t need 100Mbps speeds? Remember?
“But the question is do households need to have – will they value, 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‘s 7.30 in 2013. “Remember, to stream a high definition video, a high definition video requires six megabits per second so you’ve got to have a lot of them going simultaneously to get to 100[Mbps].”
Opposition leader Bill Shorten was quick to comment on the news of Malcolm’s flashy new taxpayer-funded connection, pointing out that thousands are getting by on just a quarter of those speeds.
“Mr Turnbull says that Australian businesses and families don’t need a first rate NBN, but he’s happy to use taxpayer money to look after his own suburb and make sure they do,” he said.
Opposition Leader @billshortenmp: Kirribilli and Point Piper residences have 100 megabit fibre NBN, but there are whole suburbs in other areas with the second rate copper network. @TurnbullMalcolm is happy to look after his own suburb.
MORE: https://t.co/ZqKMvfxkvy #SkyLiveNow pic.twitter.com/fmz2f43G5b
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) February 26, 2018
Sure, the guy’s prime minister of Australia, but what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and the gander want some fucking reliable NBN for Christ’s sake.
