Turnbull says Labor wasted $20b on NBN Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull says Labor has wasted more than $50 billion on the NBN. COMMUNICATIONS Minister Malcolm Turnbull has accused the former Labor government of wasting up to $20 billion on the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN), but says the money lost could have been more than twice that amount. The coalition on Thursday released a strategic review of the NBN, which found that under Labor's plans the rollout would miss its 2021 target by three years and cost $73 billion - up from $43 billion - to complete. The coalition plans to deliver a fibre-to-the-node NBN, a slower but less expensive version of Labor's fibre-to-the-home plan. Mr Turnbull said the NBN should have cost $15 billion to $20 billion "had you approached it the right way from the start." "The cheapest way to complete this from where we are now, starting from the mess Labor's left us in, is $41 billion," he told Sky News on Sunday. So I think you can say very plausibly, very reasonably, that there is ... between $15 (billion) and $20 billion of value wasted. And if you'd ... continued down Labor's route you'd be talking about wasting well over $50 billion. The review also found the new government would not be able to meet its pledge of delivering 25 megabits per second (Mbps) to all Australians by 2016, and its NBN plans would cost 40 per cent more than the $29.5 billion estimated in April. Mr Turnbull said he didn't "feel any shame" about the government's inaccurate pre-election forecasts. "They were (cost) estimates done in the best of good faith from opposition," he said. As far as the 2016 target is concerned, I'm very disappointed that the company is not going to be able to do that.