Abbott attacks Rudd's tax plan

SYDNEY: After admitting that not everyone shares his views Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, in a major speech to close Federal Budget week, mounted a blistering attack on the Rudd Government's third Budget yesterday.

"They are proposing to plunge a dagger into the heart of Australia's prosperity," he said, referring to Labor's proposed super profits tax on mining companies.

"They (the Government) have spent all of the carefully accumulated capital."

Abbott sought to illustrate the size of the Budget deficit by comparing it to the cost of Holden Commodores and aeroplanes.

He said talking about billions of dollars was "meaningless to the average person in the street".

Instead, Abbott converted the 2010/11 deficit of A$57 billion ($71.6 billion) into cars.

"A billion dollars is the cost of 20,000 Holden Commodores, that means that A$50 billion is one million Holden Commodores," he said.

"The deficit this year is the price of one million Holden Commodores, it is a staggering, staggering amount of money."

Abbott hit a little turbulence with his numbers when moving on to aeroplanes.

He tried to convert the amount of money he said the Government would borrow each week - A$700 million - into 747 jet planes.

"A$700 million is three, is two, 747s every week," he said. "That's 100 within two years."

Abbott said the Government's forecast of moving into surplus in three years was a fairy tale, based on optimistic assumptions about growth.

"The idea that the Rudd Government is ever going to deliver a surplus is as big a fairy tale as the book that the Prime Minister spent his Christmas holidays writing," he said. "It just is not going to happen."

Abbott was referring to a children's book written by Rudd about his pets.

Abbott went on to say the Coalition was readying itself to break the 79-year record of Australians not voting out a one-term government.

"Ladies and gentlemen, a 79-year-old record is just waiting to fall."

The last one-term government was under Labor's Jim Scullin and was ejected from office in January 1932.

"I think we can win," Abbott said.

- AAP