at last turnbull speaks

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull says the federal government's plans to split Telstra Corp Ltd's retail and wholesale arms amounts to bullying and blackmail.

While delivering the 2009 Sir Robert Menzies lecture at the Parliament of Victoria, Mr Turnbull claimed the government's proposal has stripped billions of dollars from the telco's value and was "another example of reckless Labor borrowing and spending".

"All of the work published by industry analysts suggests the NBN will not only be uncommercial but will require an enormous government subsidy to establish," Mr Turnbull said.

"So what's the solution? Bully and blackmail Telstra to break up its businesses and, in effect, sell its own network into the NBN (national broadband network)?

"Note this is a private business, a listed company, which the commonwealth government had sold to investors on the basis it was an integrated telecommunications company.

"At this stage the largest single infrastructure project proposed by the Rudd government is nothing more than a thought bubble: the only achievement to date being to strip billions of dollars of value from Telstra shareholders' investment and to employ a chief executive at a salary of $2 million a year.

"These and many other wasteful projects and programs add up to an enormous diversion of productive resources from better, more productive uses. These projects will undermine Australia's economic growth and the living standards of all Australians for years to come."