By Jonathan Swan and Lucy Battersby
Former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski has been appointed chairman of the new NBN Co board.
Dr Switkowski, the nuclear physicist who was dumped as Telstra’s chief executive in 2004, will lead a three-person board overseeing Australia’s largest infrastructure project.
Ziggy Switkowski has been appointed to the board of NBN Co.Credit: Dallas Kilponen
The new NBN Co board was recommended by Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull and confirmed in the Coalition cabinet meeting on Thursday.
Dr Switkowski, who replaces outgoing chairwoman Siobhan McKenna, will be joined by current NBN Co board members Kerry Schott and Alison Lansley.
NBN Co board member Kerry Schott.
The two women are the only survivors of the former NBN Co board, who tendered their resignations after the Coalition won the election. Mr Turnbull had urged them to resign and previously had criticised the lack of telecommunications and construction experience on the board. The Coalition frontbench accepted their resignations in Thursday’s cabinet meeting.
Mr Turnbull, who blamed the previous board for cost blowouts and timetable delays, had urged the board to resign.
As executive chairman, Dr Switkowski will act as a temporary chief executive while the NBN Co and its headhunters search for a replacement to the former CEO Mike Quigley.
New board members will soon be added to the current group of three, Mr Turnbull said.
NBN Co board member Alison Lansley
Mr Turnbull has said on numerous occasions that given the NBN was a massive building project, he wanted the leadership of the company to have construction experience.
He conceded on Thursday that Dr Switkowski had never led a large scale construction project, saying that construction experience would be ''very relevant'' in the search for a new CEO.
Brushing off criticisms about Dr Switkowski's reign at Telstra, which was characterised by a disappointing share price, Mr Turnbull described the new NBN Co chairman as ''one of the most experienced telecom executives in Australia'' and an ''outstanding'' business leader.
Dr Switkowski said he was "greatly pleased, indeed honoured, to have been appointed to this role" and hoped to "make this truly significant national project a success".
Dr Schott, a favourite of Mr Turnbull’s, is a former managing director of Deutsche Bank and deputy secretary of the NSW Treasury. She was also a staff member at Mr Turnbull’s now defunct consulting firm Whitlam Turnbull between 1987 and 1990.
''Kerry last worked with me in the 1990s, 23 years ago,'' Mr Turnbull said on Tuesday last week.
Ms Lansley was a partner at the law firm Mallesons and served on a number of boards including the Financial Services Institute of Australasia.
Labor's broadband spokesman, Anthony Albanese said on Thursday afternoon Mr Turnbull had failed to add experience relevant to the NBN rollout with his decision.
''One of the first principles of good governance is that a board should have an appropriate and broad mix of skills and experience,'' he said.
''This cannot be achieved with a three-person board, no matter how accomplished Mr Turnbull may think they are.
''...While Dr Swikowski has been CEO of both Telstra and Optus, he was not in charge of any major new network construction activity in either role.
''His tenure at Optus and Telstra was not without controversy.''
Rumours that Mr Turnbull had offered a board position to former Leighton Holdings boss Wal King are understood to be false. Mr King’s former company is embroiled in a bribery and corruption scandal, exposed by Fairfax Media on Thursday.
Mr King has denied the claims he was aware of the bribery and fraud allegations made against the building giant.
Mr Turnbull has already instructed the company building the NBN to start testing copper-based broadband technologies. The Coalition’s policy involves piggybacking on copper telephone wires rather than following Labor’s more expensive plan to run fibre optic cables to 93 per cent of homes and businesses around Australia.
With the new board confirmed, Mr Turnbull can start negotiating with Telstra to buy their copper telephone lines.
Telstra boss David Thodey has already said he will accept nothing less than the $11 billion deal he struck with the previous government to decommission Telstra's copper and hand over the telco’s customers to the government-owned company.
NBN can also now begin its strategic review – which Mr Turnbull is waiting on before he confirms long term changes to the project.
The strategic review will be sent to the government for consideration by December 2.
The Communications Minister has told NBN Co to finish rolling out fibre in areas where construction contracts have already been signed, with construction at 300,000 premises expected to be completed soon. Construction may also start at a further 900,000 premises listed on NBN Co’s one-year rollout plan, where detailed design work has been done.
After years of missed targets, Mr Turnbull indicated last week he wanted NBN Co to be more realistic about how many homes and businesses it could connect to the network.
Mr Turnbull said he had addressed NBN Co staff and asked them to give him ‘‘plain unvarnished facts’’ and that he wanted NBN Co to be more transparent than a publicly listed company.
''What we need in the future is the facts,'' he said.
''It is always nice to get good news, I am interested in the facts, the true news, what is actually happening.''
The NBN Co had revised down its target for premises passed at June 30, 2014 from 981,000 to 729,000, Mr Turnbull has said.
A spokesman for NBN Co said this latest revision ''reflects the impact of Telstra's five-month remediation stoppage''.
Telstra stopped work in May after unions raised concerns about contractors working with asbestos without proper training or protective equipment.