A vote for Abbott will hit your hip pocket: PM - Sydney Morning Herald

EXCLUSIVE

Casting herself as a ''westie'': Julia Gillard arriving at the University of Western Sydney. Photo: Andrew Meares

Families would pay higher income tax and lose payments worth up to $2500 a year if Tony Abbott became prime minister, Julia Gillard will claim on Monday.

Armed with new government modelling on the effects of Mr Abbott's plans to scrap the carbon and mining taxes, Ms Gillard will make a big pitch to the hip pockets of low- and middle-income families.

Her message, targeting voters in western Sydney, is that if they elect Mr Abbott, they will be thousands of dollars a year worse off.

The modelling uses Bureau of Statistics data applied to a range of typical western Sydney households, although many of its findings would be common across the country.

But its key assumptions and conclusions have not been subject to external audit and do not include the savings in lower household energy costs that would accrue from abolishing the carbon tax.

Separate Treasury calculations put the average benefit of scrapping the carbon tax at $515 a household, including $172 a year from lower electricity prices and $78 from lower gas prices. The government's new modelling finds the removal of tax breaks brought in as part of the carbon tax, and the promised scrapping of the schoolkids' bonus as a benefit of the mining tax, would mean many households would lose between $1500 and $2500 a year. In western Sydney, it suggests 150,000

families would lose the bonus, which pays $410 a year for each primary school student, and $820 a year for each secondary student.

But that figure is dwarfed by the number hit by higher income taxes, assuming an Abbott government held to its promise to remove carbon tax compensation which increased the tax-free threshold for those earning less than $80,000 a year from $6000 to $18,200.

The government says that change would hit 565,000 individuals in western Sydney, including 45,000 part-time workers.

The modelling is expected to inform Ms Gillard's key message to voters and has been timed to coincide with the first full day of her five-day swing through western Sydney.

Polling conducted for Fairfax Media and released on Saturday suggests the ALP is in danger of losing a swag of safe seats in western Sydney. The loss would sweep it from office regardless of its performance elsewhere.

Mr Abbott tried to spoil Ms Gillard's run by heading west on Sunday to spruik his plan for relieving cost-of-living pressure on struggling families.

In a speech to the University of Western Sydney on Sunday evening, Ms Gillard sought to leverage her own status as a ''westie'', albeit in Melbourne. Her comments were clearly aimed at rebutting Mr Abbott's criticism that while he is a resident of Sydney, she is a tourist.

''For far too long, the community I made my home, the communities I represent, have been the kind of places people hurried through, not places where you stopped and stayed,'' she said. ''Being from the west should never be viewed as being second rate.''

She pledged five things to improve western Sydney: by putting Australian jobs first; delivering high-speed broadband, improving education; insuring people against disability; and helping with the cost of living.