News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch isn't sitting in his "bat cave" plotting against Labor's national broadband network (NBN), opposition front bencher Malcolm Turnbull says.
Mr Turnbull believes Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is grasping at straws trying to imply Mr Murdoch's local media interests and the coalition are aligned against the $37.4 billion project.
"He looks like Tintin but he's not much of a detective," the coalition communications spokesman told reporters in Sydney on Thursday.
Mr Turnbull said the universal judgment of the business community - including Mr Murdoch - was that Labor's NBN was too expensive and taking too long to roll out.
"So Rupert Murdoch's views on the NBN are very mundane," he said.
"He's an original thinker and a great entrepreneur and businessman but when it comes to the NBN he's not saying anything that just about every other businessperson in Australia is not saying."
Mr Turnbull was asked whether he had discussed the coalition's NBN policy with Mr Murdoch.
"I haven't discussed it with him in those terms, in terms of our specific policy," he said.
"But I can tell you that Murdoch's views are nothing special."
While he hadn't spoken to Mr Murdoch for a few years, Mr Turnbull said he'd known him very well for close to 40 years.
Labor claims Mr Murdoch's media interests are hostile to its NBN because it could pose a commercial threat to News Corp's half-owned pay TV business Foxtel.
The argument is that consumers could opt to use fast NBN speeds to download their own visual entertainment rather than pay for a Foxtel subscription.
Mr Rudd said Mr Murdoch had a "democratic right" to rail against Labor's policies through his publications but wondered what was behind it.
He's also said there was a "strange coincidence of interests" between News Corp and the coalition, after The Daily Telegraph newspaper printed an editorial under the headline: "Kick this mob out" on day one of the election campaign.
Parliamentary Secretary for Broadband, Ed Husic, called Mr Turnbull a bully and said he was embarrassed he had to sell a dud plan.
"He's embarrassed (to be) selling a dud of a plan that he knows will not deliver," Mr Husic said.
Mr Husic said he felt sorry for Mr Turnbull for being tasked with one of the hardest jobs going - selling an archaic copper system to the public.
"But he shouldn't hold to ransom the economic progress that can be unleashed by having a modern network," he said.
