Budget punishes families: Shorten

Labor has accused Malcolm Turnbull of being seriously out of touch with average Australian families.

The government missed the mark with its budget, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said on Wednesday, just days away from the start of a federal election.

"This is a budget which favours the millionaires over the battlers," he told the Nine Network.

"This government has missed an opportunity. It is not nation-building, it is nation-shrinking.

"I think that this budget was meant to be Malcolm Turnbull's big justification for rolling Tony Abbott, but at the end of listening to Scott Morrison last night I thought `is that what all the fuss is about'?

"Malcolm Turnbull is seriously out of touch with average families," Mr Shorten told the Seven Network.

Labor will support the government's plan to increase from $80,000 to $87,000 the threshold at which the second-highest tax rate cuts in even though most Australians would miss out.

The top 10 per cent of earners were getting the vast bulk of tax cuts, Mr Shorten said.

"We think that is the wrong priority when they are cutting health and education."

With the two per cent budget repair levy on high-income earners coming to an end mid-next year, those earning a million dollars would get nearly $17,000 in a tax cut.

"But an average family on $60,000 with three children would lose more than $3000 in payments," Mr Shorten said.

Mr Turnbull said Labor was setting itself up for "some kind of class war".

"They are arguing that people who earn $80,000 a year are rich," he told ABC radio.

"That's the type of war of envy, the politics of envy, which absolutely stands in the way of aspiration and enterprise and growth."

Labor frontbencher Ed Husic likened the budget to a preview of an RSL hypnosis trick.

"Where in Malcolm Turnbull's mind Donald Trump is a corner store owner, the Hilton is a bed and breakfast and BHP's a landscaping company," he told reporters.

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said the government's plan to increase the threshold for the small business tax cut over 10 years was a tricky way of delivering tax cuts for big business.

"It's just laughable that they would take the small business tax rate and give it to businesses with a turnover of up to $1 billion," he told Sky News.

Mr Shorten said he was pleased the Turnbull government had adopted some of Labor's budget repair measures, including a hike in the tobacco excise and tackling high-end superannuation tax concessions.