LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: As you might have heard earlier in the news, the National Broadband Network dominated Federal Parliament today.

But tonight the prime minister who first introduced the scheme is hitting back at claims that it was a train wreck and a mistake.

Kevin Rudd is squarely pointing the finger at Malcolm Turnbull, saying if the Coalition had gone ahead with Labor's plan to send fibre to homes and businesses instead of using a mix of technologies, the NBN would be faster and cheaper.

Mr Rudd lives mostly in New York these days, but he's in Australia this week to promote his memoir, titled 'Not for the Faint-Hearted'. He joined me in the Sydney studio.

Kevin Rudd, nice to see you again.

KEVIN RUDD, PRIME MINISTER 2007-2010, 2013: Good to be back in Oz.

LEIGH SALES: You opened this memoir by saying, "It's a letter of encouragement to those who may consider a future in public life." Given the brutality of politics when you look at what happened to you and given the personal sacrifices that are involved, why do you still recommend it as a path that people should take?

KEVIN RUDD: There's a couple of reasons. One is: I think the state of our democracies across the West, not just here in Australia, is increasingly in peril. And you see this in the United States; you see it in Europe; you see it in Britain.

And I think, therefore, if people are simply drained out from participating in a political process and leadership, it's to the greater peril of democracy longer-term.

I think there's another reason and I speak on behalf of progressive politics: people who actually believe in positive change for social opportunities for people, economic opportunities for people. And folks that I run into who have those sort of sentiments and those sort of ideals are often frightened, discouraged, have a slightly pessimistic view of the world and the future in general.

And to the extent that I can modestly contribute with this book of mine to give them a bit of a shot in the arm, I seek to do so.

LEIGH SALES: You save most of your vitriol for your treasurer, Wayne Swan. You write that he was ill at ease in his Treasury portfolio and that he was not up to the job. Why did you then keep him there, given what an important job that was for the nation?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, I say very bluntly in the book that this was an error of judgement on my part. And secondly, I think there's another live factor in it: because Mr Swan was such a strong factional player, I was concerned that there would be a whole lot of additional instability which arose, if I was to remove him from the portfolio.

I think there's a third factor as well, as I think back on it, which is: Keating always said to me that the Treasury is the best tutor in the world. It can actually, you know, turn an open and rational or untrained mind into someone which is fully at ease with the Treasury portfolio. So I thought that Treasury would train him up. It didn't quite work out that way.

LEIGH SALES: If he were here, he would probably say, "Well, you're reinventing history because of how things unfolded"?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, just ask all his colleagues about his performance in the Parliament each day, trying to defend the government's position during the Global Financial Crisis. And although they will never do it, ask Treasury officers, in terms of their internal reflections.

LEIGH SALES: You reserve a lot of praise in your book for Anthony Albanese, calling him the most gifted natural politician of his time.

KEVIN RUDD: Yeah, I think that's a fair call.

LEIGH SALES: Has the Labor Party, then, made a mistake in having Bill Shorten as leader and not Anthony Albanese?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, you know something? One of the reasons I came back to the leadership in 2013 was to get the Caucus finally to agree to a system of electing the leader, whereby it was not possible to launch a midnight coup, as happened in 2010; that for future elections of the leadership it would be 50 per cent the parliamentary party and 50 per cent the entire national branch membership of the Australian Labor Party.

And through that process, Mr Shorten was elected. So I cannot defend the process and then pick and choose who actually prevails in that process. Mr Shorten did.

My support for Mr Albanese is long-standing. He was my deputy prime minister, a highly effective and competent minister.

And if I were Bill, I'd be using Albo a lot, lot more.

LEIGH SALES: What sort of a prime minister do you think Bill Shorten would make?

KEVIN RUDD: I think he'd be an effective consensus builder. I think that's his natural strength and I think building consensus across the country will be an important challenge if and when Labor returns to the Treasury benches.

LEIGH SALES: In this book you write about the Republican referendum in 1999 and you note that it started with only 12 per cent undecided, with the Republican movement in the lead. It had the backing of every media outlet in the country.

You write: "It was a textbook study of the conservatives' ability to marshal again the forces of fear over hope." Do you see any parallels with the same-sex marriage campaign?

KEVIN RUDD: Yeah. There's a lot of optimism, I discover, returning to Australia, about how this particular vote - or whatever you are going to call it - that Mr Turnbull has delivered to the country.

I just worry, frankly, about what's happening below the radar here. The conservatives have a phenomenal opportunity to mobilise the agents of fear, anxiety and concern and to play on deep historical and cultural sensitivities.

And I'm not as buoyant as some in terms of the inevitability of this result - or, if it is a positive result, how convincing will it be.

LEIGH SALES: One of your major policies, the National Broadband Network, is in the news today. Its CEO says it may never turn a profit. There are acres of customer complaints about its operation.

Did the Labor Party saddle the nation with a white elephant?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, Leigh, you know as well as I do that's a grossly unfair question, because what we launched as the National Broadband Network was fibre optic to the premises nationwide, because it would be that model which actually delivered the revenue stream long-term to make the NBN financially sustainable. And it was that on which it was modelled.

So what did Abbott and Turnbull then do? They turned it on its head and made it fibre optic not to the premises but to the node: that mystical point somewhere in the neighbourhood. So, in other words, they changed the model completely.

And the reason why people are not taking it up is because what we find is that people don't see the advantage in terms of reliable bandwidth and band speed on the ground.

I note in passing that the position adopted by the conservatives in the 2013 election seems to have been identical with that preferred by News Limited. It's I think a matter of historical record that News Limited did not want the National Broadband Network; that News Limited did not want fibre optic to the premises.

And the reason they didn't want that was because it would provide direct competition to the Foxtel cable television network in this country from service delivery companies like Netflix.

And so, mysteriously, by some act of God, the Liberal Party found itself adopting the same position as Mr Murdoch. I wonder why?

LEIGH SALES: So, in summary: Malcolm Turnbull is on the attack in Parliament this afternoon, making the point that I made, that: is it a white elephant? Your response, in a nutshell?

KEVIN RUDD: You changed horse in mid-stream. What we had planned and began to rollout was perfectly designed for this nation's needs: fibre optic to the home, to the premises, to the shop, to the school, to the hospital.

You cut that off. Frankly, the changes lie all on your head.

LEIGH SALES: Kevin Rudd, thank you very much for coming in.

KEVIN RUDD: Good to be with you.