By David Braue

Photo: Malcolm Turnbull says he is simply allowing NBN Co to "get on" with the rollout. (AAP: Dave Hunt, file photo)

Malcolm Turnbull relentlessly pursued Labor for going ahead with its NBN without first getting a cost-benefit analysis, which makes it particularly galling that he is now doing the same, writes David Braue.

The Australian public has become so used to our elected politicians breaking their word that new revelations of double-speak are greeted with little more than a shrug.

With the Abbott Government not only breaking repeated election promises around the National Broadband Network (NBN) - but also this week engaging in unconscionable hypocrisy about its planned expenditure of $41 billion without appropriate oversight - it's important that even the most jaded political observer take note.

The hypocrisy revolves around Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull's decision to issue a new Statement of Expectations (SoE) to NBN Co, the company charged with rolling out the next-generation broadband network.

In doing so, Turnbull has completely changed the architectural and strategic direction of the NBN - without waiting for the results of the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) that he commissioned in December, putatively to guide his decision about the best path forward for the project.

NBN Co under Labor suffered near continuous browbeating by Turnbull during his nearly three years in opposition, with him repeatedly questioning the credentials of its management and questioning at every opportunity Labor's decision to begin the project without conducting an extensive cost-benefit analysis (CBA).

In October 2009, Turnbull called Labor's NBN a "no cost-benefit analysis, no financial analysis required, $43 billion National Broadband Network thought bubble". A year later, he argued in an SMH editorial that a CBA was "essential" to ensure that any future NBN would deliver adequate returns to justify the expenditure of what was then $43 billion for Labor's fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) model. He wrote:

Attracted to glamorous ribbon-cutting opportunities, politicians love investing taxes in big new projects. If anyone says 'cost-benefit analysis', it is brushed away with a call to 'nation building'.

... The Gillard government must urgently undertake a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the network. Its stubborn failure to do so can only lead us to conclude that it does not want to know what that analysis will reveal.

In a parliamentary address on October 26, 2010, Turnbull said:

[The NBN] has been subject to no financial scrutiny and, remarkably, the government continues to refuse to submit it to a cost-benefit analysis. Everything we know about good government and prudence tells us that a cost-benefit analysis is required.

In November 2010, Turnbull said:

It beggars belief that a government could be so reckless as to allow such a massive investment to proceed without the publication of a business case ... and, above all, without a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.

He mentioned the CBA again in February 2011 and many other times throughout his time in opposition.

The need for a CBA remained a common part of Turnbull's rhetoric leading up to the 2013 election and through the first months of his ministry. In October 2013, he called ex-communications minister Stephen Conroy out on claims the Coalition had abandoned its CBA, saying the government remained "committed to a CBA".

In December 2013, he raised Labor's failure to conduct a CBA and said that "forecasts, business plans and practices need to be informed by sober reality".

Upon the launch of his own government's CBA, Turnbull noted that the work of his expert panel - headed by Dr Michael Vertigan AC and including Alison Deans, Professor Henry Ergas, and Tony Shaw PSM - would "provide the Government with rigorous, robust and independent advice that will help guide decisions on the future of fast broadband and the NBN in Australia".

Outlining his government's NBN plans in February this year, Turnbull said that the current "thoroughgoing cost-benefit analysis ... should have been done by the previous government before they embarked on this in the first place, but it is better late than never... As far as the NBN project is concerned, the government's commitment is to be completely transparent and treat the people of Australia as you would treat the shareholders in a public listed company."

The examples go on and on - which is why every Australian taxpayer and voter should be deeply disturbed by the Minister's unilateral decision to proceed with his favoured alternative model months before his own cost-benefit analysis is complete.

In doing so, Turnbull has presupposed the results of a CBA that could, assuming it is conducted fairly and appropriately, very well find that there is a compelling case to continue the current FTTP-based model. Indeed, there is no evidence at all to suggest that Turnbull's favoured MTM model is the best NBN approach to take - only that it will be the cheapest way of completing the network.

Even Ziggy Switkowski, the Turnbull-appointed chair of NBN Co, has openly said the CBA could repaint the correct direction for the NBN - noting in recent Senate Select Committee testimony that the CBA "may reach a different conclusion once estimates of social benefits are made and offset against opportunity costs".

In other words, even the NBN's own current architects expected Turnbull to wait until the CBA was handed down before making any substantive changes to the rollout model. In changing his formal expectations of NBN Co, however, the Minister has irrevocably changed the project's direction - and done so based on what is still flimsy, unsubstantiated evidence that completely ignores the additional billions in expenditure that will be incurred when the government begins updating the MTM network to FTTP in the 2025 to 2030 time frame.

The pre-election Coalition promised Australia governance at its best but in government it has delivered one-eyed, dogmatic decision-making at its worst.

Turnbull defended his decision to issue the new SoE on the grounds that he was simply allowing NBN Co to "get on" with the rollout.

"The company has got to get on," he told journalists after the announcement, five years to the day after NBN Co was established on the mandate of then-prime minister Kevin Rudd and then-communications minister Stephen Conroy.

Now, the company will apparently be freed to "get on" with the rollout - although there is literally nowhere for it to go. After all, delivery of the government's favoured multi-technology model (MTM) - which discards the current future-proof FTTP rollout for a hodgepodge of existing and new technologies - depends on a number of significant obstacles (identified by NBN Co last year) including the incredibly complex renegotiation of the government's $11b Telstra Definitive Agreement.

Without that renegotiation complete, the government has no right to use Telstra's copper to roll out any part of its MTM model - meaning that NBN Co has no ability to roll out the model's dominant fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) technology.

With negotiations expected to continue through most of this year, there was certainly no need for Turnbull to rush to issue a new SoE that steered NBN Co away from the existing FTTP rollout. Turnbull could easily have done the right thing by waiting until the completion of his own CBA - which itself will inform the authoring of an updated NBN Co Corporate Plan, which will in turn spell out the details of the new rollout.

Yet, it appears, he couldn't resist the symbolism of changing NBN Co's marching orders on its birthday - a time when new NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow, poached from Vodafone Hutchinson Australia (VHA) to spearhead the network's new structure, is settling into his role and unceremoniously oversaw the ejection of three of NBN Co's most senior, experienced executives.

It's one thing to change the NBN, as Turnbull has made no bones about promising he would do. But when a Minister who was basically elected into his current position by his strong and unwavering call for better governance decides that those governance rules simply no longer apply to him because it's inconvenient - this is cause for concern.

With the current Government's alternative NBN still expected to cost well over $40 billion, the Government's now-clear hypocrisy - and its open contempt not only for its pre-election promises but its so-called commitment to be "completely transparent" with the Australian public - cannot be ignored. We may have become accustomed to a "no-surprises" government that has proven to be anything but, but in the wake of Turnbull's latest move, it's clear that when it comes to the NBN, there are surely more unpleasant surprises to come.

Technology journalist David Braue has been covering the telecommunications industry since it was deregulated in 1997.  View his full profile here.

NBN hypocrisy confirms contempt for process - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)