Mr Abbott also pledged yesterday that there would be no forced redundancies in the federal public service under a government he led - a departure from the previous stance of the shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey.

Mr Abbott spoke to The Canberra Times yesterday morning as he ran on the shores of Lake Walter Burley Griffin with Canberra Liberals leader Zed Seselja and a group of Liberal supporters in what is likely to be the federal leader's only local campaign appearance.

Mr Seselja had been under fire for two days, accused by his Labor opponents of ''hiding'' Mr Abbott's involvement in the local campaign while using the federal leader to raise campaign money at ''private'' party fund-raisers.

But Mr Abbott yesterday said he was keen to show his support for Mr Seselja's bid for power on October 20.

''Well, here I am,'' Mr Abbott said.

''It's great to be out with Zed, he's doing a great job, and I think, a serious chance to be our first coalition chief minister in the ACT since Gary Humphries in 2001.''

He said the 12,000 job cuts for the capital's public servants, repeatedly threatened by Mr Hockey, could be achieved without any sackings and that Labor had ''dudded'' Canberra by cutting jobs without being upfront about it with voters.

''The Commonwealth public sector payroll is 20,000 greater now than at the end of 2007, so a reduction by natural attrition of 12,000 would still leave the Commonwealth public sector payroll bigger than it was when the Howard government left office,'' Mr Abbott said. ''I really want to stress that we are not talking about forced redundancies. We are talking about not replacing everyone who leaves. ''The people of Canberra shouldn't be dudded by Labor again because Julia Gillard explicitly said before the 2010 campaign that there would be no efficiency dividends, no cuts to the public service. Since then, we've had efficiency dividend after efficiency dividend and 3000 job cuts, so really and truly Labor dudded the people of Canberra.''

Mr Abbott conceded the job cuts of the first year of the Howard government had hurt Canberra.

''I accept that Canberra did it tough for a year or so, but if you look at the totality of the Howard government, Canberra did very well under the Howard government, Australia did very well under the Howard government,'' he said.

''There will always be more jobs under the Coalition because there will always be a stronger economy under the Coalition.

''What Zed wants to do is to take the cost of living pressure off families and the best way you can do that is by not going ahead with the massive rate rises that the ACT Labor government has planned.''

Chief Minister Katy Gallagher leapt upon Mr Abbott's comments, alleging that the federal leader was now Mr Seselja's ''running mate''. ''Tony Abbott has said that he will cut 12,000 jobs in Canberra, Joe Hockey has said he will cut 20,000. [Finance spokesman] Andrew Robb wants to decentralise the public service and the federal Liberals want to cut 130,000 places out of tertiary education.''

Canberra's federal Labor members also lined up to take a swing, with member for Fraser Andrew Leigh, member for Canberra Gai Brodtmann and Senator Kate Lundy saying the territory was plunged into recession in 1996 after the Howard government slashed 30,000 public service jobs.

''In 1996-97, the impact of the Howard government's job cuts was to slash $25,000 from the price of the average Canberra home, in an era when house prices were much lower than they are today, increase the ACT unemployment rate by 1 percentage point and increase personal bankruptcies in the ACT by around 100 bankruptcies per year,'' they said in a joint statement.