Today’s announcement that NBN is halting the HFC rollout, and further delaying connections by 6 to 9 months, is a damning indictment of a Prime Minister whose second-rate NBN has descended into a national farce.

Both Malcolm Turnbull and key NBNCo executives have known about these specific problems since 2015 and there are serious questions that need to be asked:

• What is the real issue here and what aren’t we being told? 

• Why did Turnbull keep this a secret up until today?

• Are Turnbull and top NBNCo executives at war with the NBN engineering core about the future of HFC?

• Was this announcement made because of fears that leaks were about to reveal the full scope of the problems with HFC?

• Have historical cost and revenue estimates for HFC been manipulated for the purpose of covering up these problems?

• What is the impact of the rollout delay on NBN’s peak funding?

The disintegration of NBN transparency and governance under Turnbull has now crossed a red line.

The NBN is a taxpayer-funded project and Australians will not tolerate the company being run like some secret society.