Abbott on brink of $9bn hole, says Wong

FINANCE Minister Penny Wong will step up an attack on the Coalition's fiscal challenge today, releasing Labor's own costings of opposition policies that it says would blow a $9 billion hole in the budget next year.

In a glossy booklet titled Pre-Budget Deficit: Tony Abbott and the Coalition, Labor has crunched its own numbers on Coalition policy pledges, using publicly available figures from Treasury and other departments.

Senator Wong told The Sunday Age it was necessary because the Coalition had not published its own updated costings and wanted to keep the impact of its plans on the budget ''secret''.

''The opposition refuses to come clean on their numbers, so we've done the figures because Australians deserve to know what an Abbott government would mean for the budg et,'' she said.

''It is clear that the opposition will not be able to deliver a surplus in 2012-13. No wonder Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb keep changing their position on this. This document confirms Tony Abbott's economic recklessness.''

Mr Abbott last week vowed to set up an audit commission in government that would be charged with cutting spending to help balance the budget.

Labor says if the Coalition implemented the policies it took to the last election, and delivered its pledges since, without making further cuts, the budget would be in deficit by $9 billion in 2012-13.

Labor's costings suggest the Coalition would lose $3.2 billion in revenue by axing the carbon tax, and another $2 billion by scrapping the mining tax.

With the Senate to consider the mining tax laws tomorrow, Treasurer Wayne Swan is launching a website calculator that can show people how much extra they will reap in lifetime savings from the proposed boost to superannuation that Labor has linked to the mining tax.