The Labor Party would be in a better election position if it had changed the leader in March, retiring ALP heavyweight Simon Crean says.
Mr Crean, a former Labor leader and government frontbencher, ended his 23 years in politics after he called on Kevin Rudd to challenge Julia Gillard in a leadership spill in March.
Mr Rudd never did.
Mr Crean said the eventual return of Mr Rudd as prime minister had put the Labor Party "back in the race", but the change should have been made earlier.
"I still think it will be hard for Labor to win it. It would have been better had the change been made back when I called for it," he told ABC radio on Wednesday.
"Because a new treasurer could have brought down a whole new budget framework well ahead of the election, we could have contested those things in the parliament. As it's turned out, we haven't had the opportunity to do any of that in the parliament.
"So I think despite all of that, we're back in the race."
Mr Crean said the government under Ms Gillard and former treasurer Wayne Swan had made some bad judgments and framed debates badly.
"I think we got narrowed in terms of the economic debate into thinking that the measure of success was whether we could produce a surplus," he said.
"The key to people is whether they've got jobs, whether you're keeping inflation under control, whether interest rates are being kept down; these are cost of living pressures."
