Abbott pledges 'no nasty surprises, no lame excuses' Mr Abbott: backing unpopular cuts. Tony Abbott has pledged to honour Julia Gillard's tax cuts, pension rises and family payments granted to households as compensation for the carbon price, despite dumping the carbon price itself, if elected. But to help fund the package's annual cost of about $4 billion, he is prepared to adopt all of Labor's unpopular budget cuts, including slashing the Howard government's $5000 baby bonus, freezing family payment income limits, and tightening business tax arrangements. Delivering his budget-in-reply speech on Thursday evening, the Opposition Leader promised to keep Ms Gillard's "household assistance package," in effect rebranding it as his own tax relief package, in a new government offering no more "nasty surprises, and no lame excuses." "A Coalition government will keep the current income tax thresholds, and the current pension and benefit fortnightly rates while scrapping the carbon tax," he told Parliament. The carbon tax will go but no one's personal tax will go up, and no one's fortnightly pension or benefit will go down. Mr Abbott repeated his threat to renege on the federal-state school education funding plan recently agreed between the O'Farrell and federal governments. We won't back a so-called national education system that some states don't support, especially as this government has a history of spending more while schools' performance actually goes backwards. Mr Abbott repeatedly accused the government of "dodgy" economic promises and of delivering a succession of deficits despite promising a surplus by this year on 165 occasions. Dismissing Labor's $17 billion revenue writedown as a fiction, he said next year Canberra would be better off by $80 billion than six years ago. Among the savings announced were some measures already signalled, such as cutting 12,000 public service jobs and rescinding a rise in the humanitarian migration intake. Among the new proposals were scrapping the twice-yearly top-up payments to welfare recipients which now provide $210 to singles and $350 to couples on benefits "because it's supposed to be from the mining tax, and the mining tax isn't raising any revenue." His government would also delay by two years the phased rise to 12 per cent of employer superannuation contributions, taking the date at which it would be achieved to 2022. That would save more than $1 billion a year by 2016-17, according to the opposition. "These measures alone will produce nearly $5 billion a year in savings which is more than enough for tax cuts without a carbon tax," he said. The decision to back Labor's savings measures reflects a political and fiscal reality as the Coalition prepares to fight an election it believes it will win. Politically, it represents a victory for Labor because it means the opposition will agree to the cuts. Mr Abbott's refusal to respond to the budget in detail, contradicted his demands on the then opposition when he was a minister in the Howard government.' With the economy centre stage of the pre-election debate, the opposition's attack on the budget floundered in question time on Thursday when treasury spokesman, Joe Hockey, led a sustained attack using New Zealand as an example. He praised New Zealand's superior economic performance for forecasting "faster economic growth, falling unemployment, and a budget surplus one year earlier than Australia." The government described the comparison as laughable, pointing out that the NZ economy had grown by 4 per cent, since the global financial crisis while Australia's had grown by 13 per cent. The Minister for Finance, Penny Wong, accused Mr Abbott of targeting low and middle income earners in his budget reply. ""We've had a sneak peek tonight but he will keep the rest a secret until after the election,"" Senator Wong said. She accused Mr Abbott of leaving 8.4 million people worse off as a result of his decision to defer the increased superannuation contributions and of looking to education to find further budget savings. Senator Wong welcomed Mr Abbott's signal that he may be prepared to support the government's budget savings, noting that Mr Abbott had ""recognised the rigour in the government's budget while railing against it"." with Stephanie Peatling