Bill Shorten will commit Labor to keeping the coalition's budget repair levy on high-income earners when he delivers his budget reply speech on Thursday.
Treasurer Scott Morrison's second budget delivered on Tuesday signalled the end to the two per cent levy, which was temporarily put in place in 2014 to help balance the books.
But Labor believes that with the deficit for 2017/18 being 10 times worse than the Liberals' first budget predicted, now is not the time to remove the levy.
The opposition is still weighing up whether to back a hike in the Medicare levy on most Australian taxpayers to fund disability insurance, which could also be confirmed on Thursday.
The government wants to increase the Medicare levy paid by almost all workers by half a percentage point to 2.5 per cent of taxable income from July 1, 2019, to provide long-term funding for the NDIS.
"At a time when the government is asking every other working Australian to pay a higher rate of tax, Labor will not support spending at least $1.2 billion each year on the wealthiest two per cent," Mr Shorten will tell parliament.
"It is not fair that - under this government - someone on $1 million will be over $16,000 better off every year while Australians on $30,000 and $40,000 will have to pay more."
The opposition leader will emphasise budgets are about "choices".
"(Mr Turnbull's) chosen his own political survival over everything else."
With many commentators describing the 2017 budget as "Labor lite", Mr Shorten will describe it as "Liberal through and through".
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Mr Morrison took to the airwaves and the floor of parliament on Wednesday to talk up the "fairness" of the budget and the government's commitment to fully fund the national disability insurance scheme while balancing the books.
Mr Turnbull told parliament, under questioning by Labor, while Australian families would feel the impost, they understood the need for the insurance scheme.
"How is it fair to promise parents of disabled children there is an NDIS and never fund it?" Mr Turnbull said.
"They (Labor) talk about the NDIS and never funded it. We have. We have delivered."
Mr Morrison said there was a $55.7 billion funding gap for the NDIS over the next 10 years and the Senate had blocked savings measures to fill the gap, forcing the government to look elsewhere for the money.
"The one thing this government was not going to do was walk away from the commitments (we've) made to Australians living with disabilities all around the country."
The scheme is expected to cover 600,000 Australians when it is fully rolled out by 2019, when the levy starts.
With the budget getting a largely positive reception, Mr Shorten homed in on the coalition's approach to schools and health as a negative.
"A Labor budget wouldn't be cutting funding to schools and raising the price of going to university," he said.
"It would properly sort out the freeze on Medicare. And we would do something fair dinkum on housing affordability."
Labor employment spokesman Brendan O'Connor said the government's "jobs and growth" mantra had been ditched because the budget figures showed almost 100,000 fewer jobs over the next four years and 1.1 million under-employed Australians.
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