The Australian Op-Ed: Malcolm Turnbull’s NBN fix shows why he’s Prime Minister

Speaking after becoming Liberal Party leader last week, Malcolm Turnbull said his government would make decisions in a thoughtful and considered manner — and the culture of his leadership would be consultative and collaborative.

His track record as communications minister powerfully reinforces this claim.

As communications minister, Turnbull started with a clear focus on defining the policy goal — and choosing the most cost-effective path to reach it.

The contrast with Labor’s approach is stark. Ex-prime minister Kevin Rudd and former communications minister Stephen Conroy started with a headline grabbing announcement — a National Broadband Network to deliver 100 megabits per second — rather than first defining the policy problem that needed to be addressed.

They had little focus on delivery. So when the Coalition won government in 2013, the NBN was a mess, with only 348,000 premises around the country able to connect after six years of Labor government.

Today, just two years later, that number exceeds 1.3 million — and NBN Co’s recently released corporate plan sets out a clear path to 75 per cent of premises in Australia able to connect by mid-2018.

In delivering this impressive turnaround, the first key feature of Malcolm Turnbull’s approach was to start with a careful analysis of the facts. There was detailed policy work in opposition, and once in government he commissioned the NBN strategic review — a thorough, fact-based analysis of the issues the company faced.

Next, he oversaw the crafting of a robust strategy — based on the outcomes of the strategic review which found that the best way to deliver higher speeds, quickly, was a combination of fibre to the premises, fibre to the node and cable.

As minister, Turnbull successfully completed ambitious talks with Telstra and Optus to reshape the poor deals the previous government had done: without this, the NBN could not have used fibre to the node because Labor had not bothered to secure the right to use Telstra’s copper in exchange for the billions that company was to receive. This renegotiation was a very considerable feat — drawing on his experience as a commercial negotiator over many decades. In a political context where successful negotiation with crossbench senators is key to getting legislation passed, negotiating skills of this kind are key.

The NBN turnaround highlights another aspect of Malcolm’s leadership style: draw on smart, competent, experienced people. The NBN board had virtually no one with serious telecommunications experience on it. Turnbull moved quickly to appoint former Telstra and Optus CEO Ziggy Switkowski as chairman, as well as several others with deep industry knowledge. He secured Bill Morrow — then-CEO of Vodafone Australia, and a highly experienced global telco executive — as CEO.

He showed the same approach to other issues such as the digital transformation of government. The British government is a world leader in this area: Turnbull brought that government’s chief technology officer, Liam Maxwell, to Australia to share his expertise, and later hired a senior member of Maxwell’s team, Paul Shetler, to head up the Digital Transformation Office in Australia.

Another key principle has been transparency and openness. As Turnbull said earlier this week, “there are few things more important in any organisation than its culture”. Within NBN Co and his department, he insisted on being told the bad news as well as the good news — replacing the politicised culture of spin which his predecessor Stephen Conroy had created. He directed NBN Co to publish its rollout numbers on its website every week — and to hold quarterly briefings in the same fashion as a listed public company.

But perhaps the most important lesson for the future from Turnbull's approach as communications minister is the demonstration of his capacity to inherit a policy and evolve it into something better. Labor’s NBN strategy was deeply flawed; Malcolm reshaped it into a credible and effective strategy, and then drove a disciplined execution of the strategy. That is why the NBN today is regularly passing nearly 13,000 premises a week, and steadily building that run rate.

This week, Turnbull has committed to apply a set of leadership principles as Prime Minister — the same principles which have underpinned his comprehensive turnaround of Labor’s disastrous NBN.

Across the breadth of the Turnbull government, this rational, fact-based, collaborative approach will be key to the government’s effectiveness — and to seizing the rich opportunities available to Australia in today’s globally competitive economy.

Paul Fletcher has been Parliamentary Secretary to former minister for communications Malcolm Turnbull for the past two years.