Federal opposition leader Bill Shorten is under pressure to authorise the release of confidential cabinet documents on the national broadband network's costings Labor received while in government.
Federal opposition leader Bill Shorten is under pressure to authorise the release of confidential cabinet documents on national broadband network costings Labor received while in government.
A review of the NBN informed the Gillard government the project could leave taxpayers $31 billion worse off, News Corp Australia reported recently.
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Monday that Labor senator Penny Wong had complained the information was a selective account of the total advice received by Labor.
"Well there is a very simple solution to that," he said on Monday.
"Mr Shorten as opposition leader can authorise the release of cabinet papers of the previous government.
"Those papers are otherwise unacceptable by the subsequent government, that is our government, the coalition.
"Mr Shorten should do that.
"If he wants to get rid of the concern about selectivity then he can arrange for all those materials to be made available."
Mr Turnbull, addressing an NBN workshop in Sydney, said the NBN was expected to fall 21 per cent short of its initial forecasts of how many premises fibre optic cabling would pass by 2014.
"Now we can't change the past and it takes time to turn around a super tanker, which is the position the NBN is in at the moment," he said.
A strategic review is under way into the NBN Co.
Mr Turnbull also took aim at media coverage of the NBN, saying that "a combination of indolence and a lack of curiosity" rather than bias contributed to the "woeful" coverage of broadband.
"I have to say that, by and large, the standard of reporting of technology and broadband by the mainstream media has been woeful," he said.
"If the Australian public are misinformed about these issues, it was in large part a consequence of the unwillingness of the mainstream media to pay any attention to what is really going on in the industry."
There had been no interest in people who were hands on with the NBN and the mainstream media had "really, really let the country down", Mr Turnbull said.
His frank comments were in response to a question on whether he would release his blue book - public servant information provided to the incoming coalition government.
Mr Turnbull said it was important that public servant advice to ministers was frank and fearless.
"If every bit of written advice public servants gave ministers was published, journalists would have a field day," he said.
"It would be a field day for not very long because all the advice would then be given orally because there needs to be a degree of candour.
"What is relevant in terms of the NBN is getting the facts out there."
