Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was under fire yesterday over startling comments in which he admitted that he had let down voters and needed to do better, as elections loom.
In the surprising mea culpa on national TV, Rudd said being in power was harder than he had expected, and while the government was meeting most of the commitments made during the 2007 election, it had fallen short on others.
“Look, I think it is quite plain that one of the problems that we have had as a government, for which I accept responsibility, is that we didn’t anticipate how hard it was going to be to deliver things,” he said on Sunday.
“So we need to lift our game, I need to lift my game in terms of delivering on these undertakings, that’s fair criticism,” he said.
Rudd, a former diplomat who has enjoyed record approval ratings since becoming prime minister in November 2007, said his center-left Labor government deserved the “whacking” it was taking in the polls.
He said while the government had successfully managed the global financial crisis, it had been too ambitious with a hospital reform plan and had to “get on” with its climate change agenda.
The comments rankled some members of his government, who described them as a risky move after a poll published over the weekend showed Labor’s lead slipping from 52.7 percent of the vote at the 2007 election to 50 percent.
“We’ve been a good government. We’ve done a lot more good than bad,” one unnamed minister told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Another senior Labor figure said Rudd was sending the wrong message.
“He’s breaking all the rules of power,” he told the paper, without revealing his identity. “You’ve got to look like you want it, own it.”
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