Melbourne beats Sydney on NBN talent
National Broadband Network (NBN) chief Mike Quigley revealed yesterday that the NBN Co has been hiring more operations staff in Melbourne than Sydney.
"I do expect that we will end up with many more people in Melbourne than we do in Sydney. Simply because that's where the technical base is growing and that's where also our construction base is growing," said Quigley in a Senate Estimates yesterday.
"We have our head of construction, our [chief technology officer] are both located in Melbourne. So we are finding now we are on quite a rapid growth curve in Melbourne," added Quigley.
However, the NBN chief stressed that there was no "headquarters" as such. "We have always had known we would have two locations, one Melbourne, one Sydney," he said.
When asked if he would commute down to Melbourne from his current base in Sydney, Quigley said he expected he would definitely have to see a lot more of the southern city. "I will be wherever I need to be to get the job done, and I expect to spend an increasing amount of time in Melbourne," he said.
Quigley had received proposals from states offering incentives to establish headquarters in their geographies, but said it didn't make any sense to have a publicly owned company receiving incentives from state governments.
At the same hearing, Quigley also said that certain mainland areas will be NBN ready by the second half of this year.