Sarcasm, self-righteousness and obscure insults are all on high rotation in the latest political ruckus over internet speeds and prices.

Federal Labor is trying to embarrass the Government over the National Broadband Network with a catalogue of consumer protestations about cost and the reliability.

The Opposition has piled that lengthy list of grievances up at the Prime Minister's door — blaming his decision to scale back from all fibre connections to a mix including copper.

"He has messed up the rollout of the NBN," Labor has claimed.

"We inherited a complete mess," Malcolm Turnbull has responded, picking up that stack of complaints and whacking his opponents with it.

"For six years this crack band of managers, these fearless entrepreneurs, succeeded in connecting 51,000 premises to the NBN — in six years," the PM mocked in Parliament.

Labor argued he weakened the NBN by ending the plan to run fibre to every house, but he argues he delivered the NBN up to eight years earlier and for $30 billion less.

As internet users fume at slower than expected speeds, the PM hopes to shift the blame from the Government to the NBN's Labor architects — Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy, who have both left the Parliament.

And just as the internet skirmish erupted, Mr Rudd materialised — "Good to be back in Aus!" he beamed as he promoted volume one of his memoir in a series of interviews.

The former PM defended his national optic-fibre-to-the-premises plan, describing it as perfectly designed for the nation's needs and attacking the Coalition's subsequent changes.

"What did Abbott and Turnbull then do? They turned it on its head and made it fibre optic to the node — that mystical point somewhere in the neighbourhood," Mr Rudd told ABC's 7.30 program.

"So in other words, they changed the model completely," he added, accusing the Coalition of making it slower and less reliable.

Mr Rudd also accused the Coalition of adopting the policy advocated in by the News Corp media.

"It's a matter of historical record that News Limited did not want the NBN, and News Limited did not want fibre optic to the premises and the reason they didn't want that because it would provide direct competition to the Foxtel television network in this country," he said.

"Mysteriously the Liberal Party found itself adopting the same position as Mr Murdoch. I wonder why."

But Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has labelled Mr Rudd a "fantasist" who "left the Australian people an NBN that was a failed project".

And Treasurer Scott Morrison continued that theme in an interview on ABC's RN.

"Kevin is dreaming, He always was dreaming about the NBN and he fantasised about what he thought his thing was going to do and more importantly, how much it was going to cost," Mr Morrison said.

"Reality had to kick in," he added, defending the Government's version of the NBN.

The political squabble over causes and costs is doing little to boost confidence in the NBN, as many users around the nation wait to find out if they will get the speed they want from the network.

The more unconvinced people who turn to alternative internet providers — like mobile 5G — the harder it is to prepare the network for eventual sale.

Sorry, this video has expired The Prime Minister yesterday blamed Labor for leaving the Coalition with "a really, really big mess".

The reappearance of the "Ruddster", as he described himself on Channel 7 this morning, has not exactly sparked joy in his former colleagues.

"He has got to be doing something, so he is flogging his book and I hope he does well," frontbencher Brendan O'Connor told Sky News.

Mr O'Connor said he was "not likely to be picking up Kevin's book".

"Seeing Kevin on the scene it reminded me some things we don't want to return to — we don't want to return to public character references of our colleagues that are unfair and that is why we are such a united team these days, we don't tend to do that," he said.

"Few things better demonstrate the incompetence of the Labor Party than the conception of the NBN during that glorious Conrovian era," Mr Turnbull told Parliament, turning to his obscure invented term for former communications minister Stephen Conroy.

Mr Rudd's defence of the original NBN plan has also been questioned by Geoff Cousins, who formerly headed Optus and served on the Telstra board during NBN negotiations.

"It was originally conceived by Kevin Rudd and a couple of other people over a weekend," Mr Cousins told ABC radio.

"And I'm not talking out of school anymore because all of this has subsequently come out and yes, it was very poorly conceived.

"The original concept of running fibre to the node in Australia was really crazy expensive. Too expensive."