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A report in the New Daily has today revealed nearly 50,000 km of copper cable has been purchased for the NBN using taxpayer dollars, as of 3 March 2020.

The circumference of earth is 40,075 km.

This comes following the refusal of NBNCo to disclose its total copper purchases to the Senate on the basis that “this question is asked regularly but the answer is often misinterpreted in the media as being indicative of the amount of copper that is being used to replace existing copper in the network.”

The great irony of this statement is the significant stockpile of copper hasn’t even been used to remediate the already deteriorating copper in the ground.

According to the report, NBNCo also refused to disclose the cost of the copper purchases on the basis that information was “commercial in confidence.”

The claim that costs are commercial in confidence contradicts Senate disclosures in mid-2017 which revealed $177 million had been spent on at least 15,051 km of cable.
 
Extrapolating these figures suggests taxpayers have been billed over half a billion dollars for the nearly 50,000 km of new copper cable purchased to date.