The federal opposition leader, Tony Abbott, has confirmed his commitment to increase the superannuation guarantee from 9 to 12 per cent in correspondence with Investment Magazine Online.

The support of the increase comes in the wake of ambiguity about the opposition’s stance on the matter fuelled by the press department of Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation, Bill Shorten.

Shorten’s office released a statement that said the shadow finance minister, Andrew Robb, had hinted in an interview with Business Spectator that the coalition would not support the Gillard government’s policy of increasing the universal superannuation guarantee from 9 to 12 per cent.

In the interview with Robert Gobbliesen, Robb said if he was in power the first initiative would be to remove both the mining tax and the carbon tax.

“We are not going to support the programs that the mining tax is supposed to support in a financial sense,” he said, with Gobbliesen pointing out this included superannuation.

Abbott refuted Robb’s comments in his written correspondence with Investment Magazine Online.