The federal government have been accused of a backflip after today announcing a $3.5 billion upgrade to the National Broadband Network.

New high-speed fibre cable will be laid throughout the country and a fibre-to-home service will be made more widely available, in an approach echoing that of the Rudd government’s original proposal.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher told Scott Emerson the government’s latest attempt to bring Australians “blazing fast broadband” is not a backflip, and Labor’s approach was “100 per cent precisely wrong”.

In 2013, he argued, the Coalition government “inherited a failing project” from the Labor Rudd government.

“What we did was very carefully review the position [of the NBN], and the plan we struck was we’d use the multi-technology mix.

“One of the reasons we said we wanted to do that is because it made the rollout quicker.

“That’s been really important this year, when COVID hit Australia.”

Click PLAY below to hear the full interview