You may not know the full story here and it would be laborious to explain it fully. However the costing of the original NBN was budgeted and the time line worked out. Delays came about because of the reluctance (politically motivated) by Telstra to sell their pipes to the NBN. That took around 2 years and many millions of dollars.
Now, FTTH (FTTP) has been degraded to FTTN (node) and copper wires from the node to the premises! WTF?
Here's an apt quote:
"Shadow communications minister Jason Clare used Mr Hackett's comments to attack the Coalition's policy.
"Malcolm Turnbull sacked the NBN Co board because they didn't agree with him," he said. "A year and half later, Turnbull's hand-picked replacement has come to the same conclusion - his second-rate copper NBN is a dud." http://www.smh.com.au/business...
Not only that, but a public infrastructure project run by the government is now in the hands of 3rd party developers using old (VDSL) technology.
So when sense finally comes, all that VDSL (which has to be separately powered on street corner fridge sized boxes) needs to be ripped out. More time wasted and less bandwidth for the next decade at least.
So much for the original vision of superfast connections to over 90% of the homes in Australia.
Now Turnbull is no chump. Maybe he was forced into an alternate version of the NBN by the Liberals and is pushing this ahead, against the advice of every tech head out there. He knows it's wrong but he has no choice but follow a damaged policy.