Bill Shorten has targeted voters with billions of extra dollars for health and bigger personal income tax cuts for low income workers.
He's promising $1.2 billion to make almost all cancer scans free and another $1 billion to create 150,000 apprenticeships.
The Labor leader's budget-reply speech included a promise for six million free X-rays, mammograms, ultrasounds, and PET and CT scans.
"For so many people, cancer makes you sick and then paying for the treatment makes you poor," Mr Shorten told parliament on Thursday night.
If Labor wins the election he promised to provide new MRI machines to communities that need them most.
"We will guarantee that every single MRI machine in Australia that meets national standards is covered by Medicare for cancer scans, full stop," he said.
The speech has taken on even greater relevance this year, as it comes just weeks out from an election which Labor is widely tipped to win.
Mr Shorten also promised to match the coalition's $1080 tax cut for 4.5 million middle income earners.
But he's gone further for people earning below $45,000 a year, with the lowest income workers getting $350 a year compared to the coalition's $255.
However, Labor would not go ahead with the coalition's planned July 2022 tax cuts or the July 2024 changes - which make 94 per cent of workers pay no more than 30 cents in the dollar, with the biggest benefits going to the wealthy.
Not progressing the two coalition tax changes is expected to give Labor about $150 billion to pay down debt and balance the books.
The coalition has regularly attacked Labor after it stopped putting new medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme when the budget went strongly into deficit.
So Mr Shorten has promised to guarantee that every drug recommended by the independent experts will be listed on the PBS.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said Labor had not delivered the detailed costings on its billions of dollars in new spending.
"When Labor was last in government, not only did they deliver $240 billion in total deficits over a six-year period, they also stopped listing recommended medicines on the PBS because they ran out of money, literally," he told reporters in Canberra.
