Opposition calls for poll in Australian budget speech

Naomi Woodley

Last Updated: Fri, 13 May 2011 08:21:00 +1000

The Australian Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, has used his federal budget reply speech to set out his case for an early election.

In a reply largely devoid of new policies, the opposition leader instead sharpened his attack on the government's carbon tax, describing it as a cancer that threatens to paralyse the country.

Mr Abbott cast his speech as an alternative vision for the nation, but the government says he failed to make a single tough decision and did not even say when he could return the budget to surplus.

His speech was more of a campaign pitch than an economic plan.

"Tonight I want to reach out to Australian families, to small businesspeople, police, nurses, firefighters, teachers, shop assistants, workers in our steel mills and mines, the people who are the backbone of our society and our economy," he said.

"I do not think you are rich. I know you are struggling under a rising cost of living."

Among the only new details, he proposed more help for businesses, pledging to reduce the burden of red tape costs by $US1 billion a year.

Mr Abbott is refusing to be rushed into responding to the government's budget, saying the opposition will decide its position as each bill comes before Parliament.

He could not resist a dig at the plan to give pensioners free set-top boxes.

"Perhaps this program should be called 'building the entertainment revolution'," he said.

But, as it has been all year, Mr Abbott's main focus was the Government's proposed carbon tax.

"This is the cancer that's eroding the Prime Minister's standing and sapping this Government's authority," he said.

"If Australia goes on like this for another two-and-a-half years, what is currently a great country with a lousy government could slide into a complete morass of indecision and paralysis."

He says the government should finalise the details of the tax and take it to an election.

"Only an election could make an honest politician of this Prime Minister," he said.

"Only an election can give Australia a government with authority to make the tough decisions needed to build a stronger country and to help Australians get ahead."

The government is predicably frustrated that Mr Abbott ignored its insistence to outline specific savings.

The Finance Minister, Penny Wong, says the opposition failed to match its rhetoric with funded plans.

"Tony Abbott had one job tonight - to balance the books and he couldn't do it," she said.

"This is budget week. This is the week where we in the government after months of work on the budget laid out our economic plan for the nation - how we bring the budget back to surplus, how we deal with the impacts of the natural disasters on our economy, the overhang of the global financial crisis and most importantly, make the decisions to bring the budget back to surplus.

"Where was Mr Abbott? Where was Tony Abbott when it comes to that task?"

The Greens Leader, Bob Brown, was not impressed with Mr Abbott's speech, but he used his own reply to the Senate to criticise the budget's proposed welfare changes for single parents and teenage mothers.

"The Greens will scrutinise all these welfare measures to see if they are necessary and with a view to removing some of the harshest thorns," he said.

Language News