Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the buck stops with him when it comes to the state of the Australian economy, but he's laid the blame on the opposition for a dramatic decline in consumer confidence.
The comments follow the release yesterday of figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, showing a fall in the volume of construction work done in the June quarter.
The volume of construction work, after adjustment for price changes and regular seasonality, fell by 2.6 per cent in the quarter.
But it was a report showing a dramatic decline in consumer confidence since Labor took office nine months ago, that the opposition latched onto yesterday.
The latest ACNielsen Global Consumer Index shows that in the first half of 2008, the collapse in consumer confidence in Australia has been almost twice as severe as that of the rest of the world.
But Mr Rudd says the fall in confidence is due to global factors, like the credit crisis.