Increased funding for schools may just be a vote winner for the Turnbull government.
The government has resurrected Labor's Gonski school funding arrangements, announcing it will increase spending by 75 per cent over the next decade, providing "great schools and great teachers".
"This investment will set Australian children on the path to academic excellence and success in their future lives," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters in Sydney on Tuesday.
The decision came as a new poll found one in two respondents want increased spending on education to be included in next Tuesday's budget.
The latest Essential Research poll also found almost two-thirds support for increased health funding, while at the other end of the scale, just 10 per cent want additional assistance for business.
Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce defended the government's decision to make funding cuts to universities while pursuing a cut in the corporate tax rate.
The universities package includes a $2.8 billion efficiency dividend, a 7.5 per cent increase in course fees by 2021, and the repayment threshold for HECS-HELP loans reduced to $42,000.
Mr Joyce said the government had to make tough decisions to balance the budget.
"We've got to do that because otherwise we're just fooling everybody," he told reporters in Canberra.
Treasurer Scott Morrison has said the government will re-introduce the remainder of his 10-year business tax plan when parliament resumes next week, having only had a partial success with the program when it last sat.
Mr Joyce said Australia must cut business taxes, not to curry favour with corporations, but to drive jobs and wages.
"Because (companies) can make a decision at a boardroom about whether they invest in Ohio or whether they invest in Japan or whether they invest in Kazakhstan or Indonesia - we've got to have a reason for them to invest here," he said.
"It's another tough decision but we've got to make them."
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said cutting business tax cuts while slashing university funding and not acting on negative gearing shows the government needed to reorder its priorities.
"They need to stop governing for the top one or two per cent of Australian society - big business, the property investors," he told reporters in Townsville.
In what is expected to be a renewed push for infrastructure spending in the budget, the government announced it will build the Western Sydney Airport.
While Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott supports such infrastructure investment, she hopes the government's approach isn't going to unleash a "free-for-all of borrowing".
The projects needed to be credible and undergo a cost-benefit analysis as part of a rigorous assessment that set up Australia for a stronger economic future.
"Rather than some of the projects we have seen in our history that have not been great," she told Sky News.
