Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, has claimed to have ‘torn the shreds’ out of the assumptions underpinning the Opposition’s claims that the National Broadband Network could exceed $90 billion in final costs.

Senator Conroy claimed that the evidence given to the Joint Committee by NBN Co Chief Mike Quigley categorically disproved the Opposition’s claims.

Senator Conroy said that the evidence given by Mr Quigley proved that the actual cost of constructing the network would not exceed the $2,200 to $2,500, not the $3,600 figure put forward by Opposition Spokesman for Telecommunications Malcolm Turnbull.

In his address to the committee, Mr Quigley also stated that the NBN wholesale prices are expected to fall in real terms and is also set to be completed by 2021, not 2025 as Mr Turnbull has previously claimed.

“The robustness of NBN Co’s Corporate Plan, which the Government had independently verified by KPMG and Greenhill Caliburn, has been reaffirmed again today,” the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Senator Penny Wong, said.

“Mike Quigley, CEO of NBN Co, has demonstrated that the NBN Co Corporate Plan is sound and that the Coalition assumptions about the cost of the project are wrong.”