Hockey would target green car scheme to tighten belt

SLICING another $270 million out of the green car innovation fund will be one of several savings to be outlined by the opposition's treasury spokesman, Joe Hockey, today as the Coalition seeks to prove its credentials as a conservative manager of the economy.

As well as the savings measures, Mr Hockey will announce a ''top to bottom'' review of Australia's competition and consumer protection laws, including the Trade Practices Act, and unveil a detailed ''manifesto'' of the Coalition's values.

But his speech will contain some of the specific policy usually announced in an Opposition Leader's budget address in reply, after Tony Abbott chose to use his budget speech to attack the government's resource super profits tax and Labor's ''reckless spending''.

The $270 million cut to the green car fund comes on top of $200 million taken out of the scheme by the Rudd government in the budget and would leave $590 million over nine years in a fund that originally promised car makers more than $1 billion.

The cuts to the car scheme come on top of reductions in the Coalition's own promised 15,000-strong ''green army''.

It was going to cost $750 million a year, but Mr Abbott confirmed yesterday it would now be built up ''more slowly''. He said this was because a faster build-up could endanger the green army troops - who will fight invasive weeds, feral animals and erosion - in the same way as insulation installers were endangered by the Rudd government's pink batts scheme.