[jacques_chester]

I agree, lots of of the existing infrastructure is worn down. My understanding is that Turnbull proposes that some of it will be replaced immediately and the rest would continue to be replaced on a rolling basis.

The main difference between the coalition plan and the business-as-usual plan is that old copper will be replaced with fibre, not with new copper. It's easy to forget that waaaay back when, this is what Telstra and the government were negotiating to do anyhow.

In Turnbull's position I wouldn't have promised anything except to review once in government. For one thing, a lot of work will already be contracted and it's not plausible to renege on the contracts. So there'll be an uneven distribution of fibre/copper which will lead to some distortion in the housing market. Not huge, but it'd be nice if it wasn't there.

[elithrar]

> I agree, lots of of the existing infrastructure is worn down. My understanding is that Turnbull proposes that some of it will be replaced immediately and the rest would continue to be replaced on a rolling basis.

The problem is that these costs are most certainly not encapsulated in Turnbull's $20B costing.

[jacques_chester]

The problem is that neither the government nor the opposition have ever produced their original costings nor any audit of those costs. In the government's case we're promised that audits were done. But we can't see what was audited and we can't see what the instructions are.