This will be an education election, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has declared.
He says it will pit Labor's strong performance on education funding against what he says is government cost cutting.
Addressing teachers in Sydney, he asked rhetorically: "Who do you trust to properly fund education?"
"We will fight this as an education election," he said.
Labor has traditionally done well on education, the opposition leader promising that if successful on July 2, he would implement the full Gonski funding and even go beyond it.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who's expected to fire the election starter gun on Sunday afternoon, was keeping a low profile on Saturday.
But Liberal deputy leader Julie Bishop hit back at Mr Shorten, declaring he was making promises and raising expectations on education he couldn't meet.
"We have increased funding for education that's been paid for, not pie-in-the-sky promises that Bill shorten has made that haven't been paid for," she told reporters in Geelong.
The latest Seven-ReachTel poll, the first since the budget, puts the two-party preferred result at 50-50, indicating this will be a hard, close campaign.
However, the poll showed 33 per cent believed they would be worse off under the budget.
Fifty-nine per cent said the budget would leave them "about the same" while just seven per cent thought they would be better off.
Treasurer Scott Morrison said the government's budget wasn't about polls.
"What you got from me this week was a national plan for jobs and growth. What you got from the opposition was all politics and no plan and that gives a very stark choice to the Australian people," he told reporters in Western Sydney.
The coalition already has a problem in Melbourne, with a staff member of former coalition defence minister Kevin Andrews quitting over branch-stacking allegations in Mr Andrews' safe seat of Menzies.
Mr Andrews, who's held the seat since 1991, is now under pressure to quit or face disendorsement.
"There is a real chance Kevin Andrews could lose his seat unless the Liberal Party moves on him over this branch-stacking scandal and replace him before the election," said perennial candidate Stephen Mayne, who plans to stand for Menzies as a pro-Malcolm Turnbull liberal.
Out on the hustings in Melbourne to kick off the Greens campaign was leader Richard Di Natale, who said the Greens had never been in better shape and were hoping to pick up a swag of House of Representatives seats.
"If these seats don't turn Green at this election they'll turn Green at the next or the next one after that," he said.
Independent Senator Nick Xenophon, who's expected to do well in South Australia, urged "a pox on both their houses".
He thought Malcolm Turnbull would win and the election was his to lose.
"Bill Shorten needs to be not a small target and be pretty bold to give himself a fighting chance," he said.
