"Look to put it pretty inelegantly, the Government is doing a pretty good job pissing off the people that are supporters of the NBN and I would have thought the Government could do a lot better than this," Xenophon told ABC radio.

"I agree with some of my colleagues that the Government is burning off a lot of good will with the way they're carrying on."

Despite this, Xenophon continued to reject the idea of the NBN being taken to the Productivity Commission for assessment -- something

"I've always taken the view that with a $43 billion piece of infrastructure it's important for the Productivity Commission to look at it, but I think the Coalition's terms of reference to the Productivity Commission are too narrow; you need to look at the social benefits involved with an NBN, you need to look at issues of regional communities missing out because of market failures in the past and if the terms of reference were broader, if it looked at the nation building implications of an NBN, then I think that would be a much better terms of reference for the Productivity Commission," he said.