Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says if Malcolm Turnbull wanted the prime ministership so much, he should do something with it, rather than racing off to an early election.
Mr Turnbull will on Monday celebrate six months since rolling Tony Abbott for the top job, amid growing speculation that he will go for a double dissolution election on July 2.
Mr Shorten said if the prime minister thinks the most pressing question facing Australians is what Saturday the election should be held on, he's wrong.
"They want to see a government focused on the budget, on the nation's problems, not a government focused on keeping their own jobs and racing to an earlier election," he told reporters in Sydney on Sunday.
But Finance Minister Mathias Cormann tried to douse election talk, saying the government's first priority is to get its Senate voting reforms passed rather than pursuing another double dissolution trigger.
Parliament sits for three days this week, the last before the scheduled May 10 release of the budget.
For Mr Turnbull to go to a July 2 double dissolution election, he would have to call it on May 11, the day after the budget.
He would also need the re-establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission legislation to be rejected for a second time to provide another trigger.
The government already has the twice-rejected registered organisations laws in place.
"At the earliest opportunity when we come back in May we will be putting the Australian Building and Construction Commission legislation back to the Senate," Senator Cormann told Sky News on Sunday.
This tight timetable has raised talk that the government would bring forward the budget to May 3 to allow more time for this legalisation to be presented to the parliament, which would involve extra sitting days at a cost of $1 million a day to taxpayers.
But Senator Cormann insists the government is working towards a May 10 budget as scheduled and any other date is "hypothetical".
In any case, the government would prefer an election in the ordinary time frame - August, September or October.
"The only reason you would go to a double dissolution election ... is if you have an unresolvable deadlock between the House of Representatives and the Senate," he said.
Opposition frontbencher Anthony Albanese believes the prime minister's problem is that he doesn't stand for anything.
"He had a plan to get rid of Tony Abbott, he doesn't have a plan to govern. That's more and more obvious for all to see," he told Sky News."
He said even Mr Turnbull's aspiration for fast rail to the second airport at Badgerys Creek and plans for 30-minute cities - where no one would travel more than half an hour to work - are Labor's ideas.
"If they adopt our policy we're happy with that, but before they get any credit for new initiatives, they need to start by putting funding back ... that they cut in the 2014 budget," Labor's infrastructure spokesman said.
