Newly-appointed opposition communication spokesman Malcolm Turnbull said on Wednesday that the federal government's handling of the National Broadband Network could potentially lead to a huge waste of taxpayers' money.

Mr Turnbull got his marching orders from opposition leader Tony Abbot to scrutinise the impending waste of up to $43 billion in a project that "is going to turn out to be a white elephant on a massive scale."

The Coalition cited the Labor government's report that some 90 percent of the NBN's budget for Tasmania has all been used up with only 50 percent of residents actually being connected and falling short from the initial aim of hooking up at least 80 percent of homes in the pioneering state.

Mr Turnbull said that with the way the government has been handling the roll out of NBN so far, the likelihood of throwing out unnecessary huge amount of taxpayers' money was fast-becoming more of a reality as he urged for more transparency on the project's actual spending costs.

He lamented that every dollar wasted on the NBN roll out, which he noted could reach up to tens of billions of dollars, was money that could have been allocated to other infrastructure projects and other social services both dispensed by the state and national governments.

Mr Turnbull clarified that the Coalition's stand against the NBN was not because they were opposed to the proliferation of broadband internet but in the manner it was being implemented, adding that he himself has been a long-time player in online industry being part of the OzEmail team that was established in 1994.

He added that the alternative being proposed by the Coalition would have been far superior as compared to the present form of the NBN project but since the existing broadband roll out has been underway, his main focus for now is to ensure that money would not be wasted during its implementation stage.

Also, Mr Turnbull said that he is vehemently opposed to government's plan of integrating filtering component on NBN, stressing that it would do more harm than actually boosting up the anticipated speed of broadband traffic aside from creating "a false sense of security where parents will think their children are safe online without supervision."