Roughly 400 people, including a sizeable delegation from Orange City Council, took their seats at Charles Sturt University to question the prime minister and 13 senior cabinet ministers during a 1.5 hour public forum on Monday evening.

However Mr Rudd’s response to the public’s questions left some audience members like Orange Councillor Peter Hetherington underwhelmed.

“Well he took questions from the floor which is a great notion but at the end of the day if you’re going to do that you should at least answer it, all we got was Rudd basically saying we are doing better than our predecessors,” Cr Hetherington said yesterday.

“If you can’t answer the questions don’t take them, I really don’t think they answered too many questions directly, it was pretty much a public relations exercise.”

Cr Neil Jones also described the event as a PR exercise but said the public forum was still “worthwhile”.

Cr Fiona Rossiter agreed Kevin Rudd spent too much time deflecting criticism towards the former government.

“Look I enjoyed it but one of the things I hated was that it turned into a bagging sessions, rather than just answer the questions they criticised others and avoided saying what they’re going about problems now,” she said.

A last minute cancellation by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy meant the Orange City Council delegation had to raise their concerns about broadband and digital television with another minister.

Another meeting with Climate Change and Water Minister Penny Wong was also cancelled, with a ministerial advisor filling in for Senator Wong.