Tony Abbott invoked the ghosts of Robert Menzies and Ben Chifley as he reached out last night to Australia's ''forgotten families'' and workers with the promise that he would lower their cost of living.

In a speech that was strongly critical of the government, deliberately short of new policies, and avoided taking positions on measures in the budget, the Opposition Leader said taxes and interest rates would be lower if he were elected.

''My commitment to the forgotten families of Australia is to ease your cost of living pressure,'' he said in his budget address in reply. ''Stopping wasteful and unnecessary spending will keep your interest rates down. Stopping or removing unnecessary new taxes will make it easier for you to pay your bills.''

He took an indirect swipe at the unmarried and childless Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, by reminding the nation that he had a wife and three children ''so my family knows something of the financial pressures on nearly every Australian household''.

And in a pitch to those earning $150,000 and above, whose welfare entitlements were cut in the budget, Mr Abbott said: ''I do not think you are rich''.

While Menzies coined the phrase ''forgotten people'', Mr Abbott said the Coalition was now the champion of traditional Labor workers. ''If the ghost of Ben Chifley now hovers over this side of the Parliament, it's because the Coalition is much closer to workers' real interests than a Labor Party that sold its soul to Senator Bob Brown.''

Mr Abbott demanded the government call an election because its broken carbon tax promise had rendered it illegitimate and the country threatened to ''slide into a morass of indecision and paralysis''. ''The government lacks legitimacy, not because it lacks a majority but because it lacks integrity,'' he said. ''That's what Australia needs - not a carbon tax but an election.''

Mr Abbott restated election promises on health and welfare reform but, in a break from convention, did not propose any significant new policies other than a pledge to reduce regulatory costs for business by $1 billion a year.

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