"More than ever, Australia needs a government that will help the nation fulfill its promise rather than a government which makes promises it cannot fulfill.' - Kevin Rudd, 2007.
- Kevin Rudd promised $290 million to be spent on improved dental care for Australians. Reneged on this post-election.
- Kevin Rudd promised a federal takeover of hospitals should their performance not drastically improve by July 2009. Never happened.
- Kevin Rudd pledged to build 36 GP 'super clinics' - of which there are currently 2 in operation.
- Kevin Rudd proposed a national high-speed broadband network, budgeted at $4.7 billion. Almost immediately after election this was scrapped and replaced with a new plan, with a budget of $43 billion.
- Pre-election Kevin Rudd promised to keep fuel and grocery prices down - a feat he must have known to be impossible. Labor launched Fuelwatch and Grocerywatch websites at huge cost to taxpayers, promptly shutting them down when they proved completely ineffective.
- Kevin Rudd promised to build 260 childcare centres on school grounds. On April 22 2010 he made a junior minister announce that this had been scrapped.
- Kevin Rudd promised a laptop for every Australian schoolchild, which has still not been anywhere near delivered.
- In early 2009 Kevin Rudd declared that on the first sitting day of parliament each year, he would deliver an update on the progress of 'closing the gap' on Aboriginal well-being. This didn't happen in 2009 OR 2010.
- Pre-election Kevin Rudd criticised John Howard's NT intervention policies, saying it treated Aborigines as 2nd class citizens. He has now EXPANDED on those policies.
- Kevin Rudd and Labor's $2.45 billion home insulation scheme failed dismally, with dodgy operators profiteering off government grants, 120 house fires, up to 1000 electrified roofs, and four deaths of installers due to lack of adequate training. Prior to the scheme Peter Garrett wrote four letters to Kevin Rudd warning him his department was not able to handle the roll-out. The letters were ignored and Kevin Rudd refuses to publicly release them. Rudd has now defied calls to front a Senate inquiry into the debacle.
- Kevin Rudd, December 2009: "Global warming is the great moral and economic challenge of our time. The resolve of the Australian government is clear - we choose action. Action now. Not action delayed. The clock is ticking for the planet." In April 2010 Kevin Rudd announced that any action on an ETS will be delayed until 2013 - two elections away.
- In 2007 Kevin Rudd criticised the Howard government for it's abuse of taxpayers' money on political advertisting, promising he would never do that. "I believe this is a sick cancer within our system. It's a cancer on democracy. You have my absolute, 100% guarantee, and each of you can hold me accountable for that." In May 2009 he launched a $38 million taxpayer funded advertising campaign to defend Labor's mining tax, using the loophole that it was a 'national emergency'.
- Unsurprisingly, Labor have removed the list of their original election promises from their official website.
