Labor to vote against key budget measures

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has vowed that Labor will seek to block key budget measures in the Senate.

Bill Shorten speaks to the media outside Parliament House

The opposition has vowed to try and block key measures of the Abbott government's first budget. (AAP)

Labor is vowing to try and block key measures of the Abbott government's unpopular first budget.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has confirmed Labor will vote against the coalition's move to introduce a $7 Medicare co-payment, as well as plans to hike the fuel excise and change the pension age.

"Putting up everyone's petrol bill we think is a bad idea in the current circumstances," Mr Shorten told the Nine Network on Wednesday.

"We will fight - and I don't know if we'll win the arguments against Tony Abbott and their bad budget - but we will fight and fight and fight for Medicare.

"We get that you've got to improve the health system and make it more cost effective but you don't do that by stopping people at the door of the doctor's surgery."

But Mr Shorten refused to confirm whether the party would support the deficit levy on high income earners.

"What we think is it is a broken promise," Mr Shorten said when asked about the coalition's plan to hike tax on people earning more than $180,000 a year.

"We haven't made a final position on that."

Mr Shorten said the Abbott government was trying to return the budget to surplus with "broken promises and by slugging ordinary people".

"First of all Tony Abbott said no new taxes under a government he leads ... he said no nation ever taxes its way to prosperity. It was a lie."

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said the Medical Research Future Fund was a great idea, but should not be funded by the Medicare co-payment.

"It should not be funded by Australia's sick and vulnerable people," he told Sky News.

"It should not be funded by people who may be on low and middle incomes who need to go the doctor."

He said Labor would oppose increasing the pension age to 70 because Treasurer Joe Hockey had failed to justify the decision.

"He says Australians should work longer than anybody else in the developed world," Mr Bowen said.

"Not one country in the OECD has a pension age of 70."

Mr Bowen later signalled that Labor would not stand in the way of the government's deficit levy.

"When this was first leaked it was going to apply to people over $80,000. Now that's not a high income earner," he told the Nine Network.

"We still don't like it, we still don't think it's a good idea, but it's not now a priority for us.

"Our priority is defending Medicare, defending pensions, defending family payments."


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Source: AAP


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