OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott says he is "wholly and solely" dedicated to recreating the "golden age" of the last coalition government.

Sixteen members of the coalition frontbench were ministers during the Howard years, Mr Abbott says.

"We will be a good government in the future because we have been a good government in the past," he told the Liberal Party's South Australian conference in Adelaide.

"We won't have to learn on the job, because we've done the job before."

Mr Abbott said the longer Labor was in power, the better it was making former prime minister John Howard look.

"The Howard government now looks like it created a golden age of prosperity which is lost," he said.

"Our task, to which we are wholly and solely dedicated, is to recreate those great days for our country and we will."

Mr Abbott said that, to give credit where it was due, in their heyday the Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating knew what it took to build a strong economy, but Prime Minister Julia Gillard did not.

"If you've got the right government, you get the right economic results," he said.

"The Howard government understood what it took to build a strong economy. The current government doesn't."