AAP
The federal opposition has demanded the government deliver an "honest budget" on May 14, rather than its usual "fudges" and "money shuffling".
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and shadow treasurer Joe Hockey launched their budget demands on Monday as Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced her new cabinet line-up after last week's aborted leadership coup and subsequent sacking and resignations.
Business applauded the appointment of West Australian MP Gary Gray to the combined ministries of resources and energy, and small business.
But opposition small business spokesman Bruce Billson said the sixth small business minister under Labor was clearly an afterthought, being bolted on to the bigger portfolio.
"The long-term economic harm Labor has caused to small business is indescribable," Mr Billson said in a statement.
Mr Abbott said the government should be concentrating on the budget, rather than "duct-taping" a ministry together.
He told reporters in Sydney his great fear was the government would continue to play the class war card "even more fiercely in the future than they have in the past".
Former resources minister Martin Ferguson said as he resigned on Friday the government must drop the class war, and take an example from the reforming Hawke/Keating Labor government.
Ms Gillard insisted it does govern in that tradition, and is a party that believes in the power of markets in a modern economy.
"I believe you can have well-functioning markets that enable you to run a nation and a society of fairness, something that Tony Abbott doesn't believe in," she told reporters in Canberra.
"Just look at his climate change policy. It would make a Soviet central planner blush."
Mr Hockey said the budget must include honest forecasts for both economic growth and revenue, particularly for the carbon and mining taxes.
He said the carbon tax was supposed to deliver $9.4 billion in 2015, based on a European price of $29 a tonne, but the price was now around $5 to $6 per tonne, while the mining tax was not going to raise anywhere near what had been originally forecast.
In the first six months of the mining tax's operation, it raised just $126 million, when it was supposed to bring in $2 billion in its first year.
Mr Hockey said costs associated with asylum seekers had blown out, and he also wanted to see the end of "money shuffling" in the budget, pointing to the push back to next year of some $3 billion due from spectrum licence sales.
The costings for the Gonski education funding reforms and the national disability insurance scheme must also go beyond the four-year forward estimates, he said.
"The government can no longer fudge it by claiming to deliver the scheme then have a token amount compared to what the real costs of the scheme are in the budget," Mr Hockey said.
Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury said the opposition had taken hypocrisy to a whole new level.
"Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey today demanded an 'honest Budget' while at the same time withholding their own costings until the dying days of the election," he said in a statement.
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