Vocal minority failing reform: Swan

Former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan has hit out at a vocal minority in business for opposing major economic reform because of their personal self-interest.

Speaking ahead of the release of his book The Good Fight, Mr Swan has taken aim at those in the business community he feels responsible for the failure of reform and for widening social inequality in Australia.

The Good Fight documents the Labor treasurer's six years in government, during which policies such as the carbon and mining taxes became a lightning rod for opposition from business.

Mr Swan said he had tremendous respect for the overwhelming majority of Australian business leaders.

"But increasingly, a vocal minority has decided to oppose any reform no matter how necessary and no matter how obvious its benefits to the whole nation, if they perceive it is in their short-term interests to do so," the now Labor backbencher will tell the National Press Club on Monday.

Such a stance was a recipe for political division, widening social inequality and "permanent reform failure", he said.

Mr Swan warned of what he called the "Americanisation of the right" in Australia, which he claimed had influenced the Abbott government's troubled first budget.

"Obsessed with defending the advantages of the wealthiest in our society," he said.

"Sticking up for them, and them alone, has become their primary cause."