About

nbn is an Australian GBE – a government business enterprise – tasked with designing, building and operating the national broadband network, one of the largest infrastructure projects in Australian history. Since March 2010, Justin Forsell, nbn’s chief legal counsel and legal and security department executive, has led nbn legal, which is responsible for a wide variety of practice areas – from construction to IT&T, corporate, communications and company secretariat functions, among others. According to nbn’s CEO, Bill Morrow, nbn’s chief legal counsel is a ‘talent magnet’, who ‘built nbn’s legal group from the ground up and developed a highly motivated, engaged and creative group of like-minded professionals’. That focus enabled nbn legal to top nbn’s Aon Hewitt-run engagement scores in the financial years of 2016 and 2017, helping place nbn in the top quartile for Best Employer Indices in Australia and New Zealand. With a strong commercial and client focus, nbn legal has adopted the company-wide focus on Lean Six Sigma and Business Process Excellence. As a combined legal and security department, nbn Legal is in a unique role to help protect the nbn™ network from physical, cyber and other attacks. As the network comprises national critical infrastructure, the legal group regularly liaises with national security entities and law enforcement agencies across the country. nbn legal was also instrumental in negotiating, executing and operationalising the $11bn AUD Definitive Agreements and Revised Definitive Agreements (the DAs) with Telstra in 2011 and 2015 respectively – milestone deals that laid the foundation for improved broadband access for all Australians, while seeking to stimulate competition in the retail telecommunications market. The DAs enabled nbn to use existing telecommunications infrastructure, reduce duplication in construction, thereby allowing nbn to accelerate network rollout, decrease costs and increase efficiency of its build and operations. nbn legal was also instrumental in the crafting and negotiating of nbn’s revenue “engine”, the Wholesale Broadband Agreement (WBA) with over 50 retail telecommunications providers. The WBA will enable nbn to scale its business and draw $5bn AUD annual revenue by the 2020 financial year. nbn legal has also become nbn’s “deal factory”, having uploaded more than 57,000 documents to its Contact Register and advised on deals worth more than $30bn AUD since the company came into existence in mid-2009.