When he was appointed communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull always said if he’d had his way, he wouldn’t have undertaken the re-nationalisation of Australian internet infrastructure with the NBN policy, and it’s clear that many in the Coalition would rather the government wasn’t lumbered with the largest infrastructure project in Australia.

Interestingly, this is the view now proffered by Evan Mulholland, former communications adviser to Comms Minister Mitch Fifield (he left that office very recently). Mulholland writes his first op-ed in The Australian today in his new role for the IPA — fillings its ranks after losing James Paterson to the Senate — in which he states that Labor would have been better off contracting out the NBN fibre-to-the-node policy as the party had planned in 2007 rather than embarking on the NBN.

It’s an interesting view from someone fresh out of the minister’s office into what might be a reluctant policy for the government, especially this week after the AFP raids. The problem is that Mulholland misses one of the major reasons why Labor embarked on the NBN in 2009 — Telstra, as the company to do the upgrades, wasn’t playing ball. Back then the management under Sol Trujillo was much less… malleable … than it is today, and that’s still saying a lot.