Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will use a speech on a progressive think-tank report to slam the government for housing policy that "actively pushes up" prices beyond middle class reach.
Speaking at the launch of The McKell Institute policy blueprint in Sydney on Thursday, Mr Shorten will warn the issue of housing affordability isn't going away.
The report - titled "Choosing Opportunity" - highlights an average Sydney home costs more than 12 times the median annual income.
"Yet you have a government persisting with a policy that actively pushes the price of housing beyond the reach of middle class and working class families," he says.
The government was spending more taxpayer money on discounts for property speculation than on infrastructure, child care or higher education, he said.
Labor wants to rein in negative gearing concessions and halve capital gains tax discounts, but the coalition won't back the changes.
The government maintains the plan would cause house prices to crash.
Mr Shorten says the think tank report "correctly" presents several social issues - like women's equality and needs-based school funding - as economic levers.
"This is the big policy shift all of us need to keep pushing," he said.
"I say pushing, because there is the deadweight of dogma and the active resistance of vested interest to overcome."
He said it had never been more important - at a time when extremists and demagogues were yelling that democracy had failed - to prove to people who felt left out that they had a stake in society.
"If we are going to prove that parliament and politics can rise above self-seeking, narrow sectional interests," he said.
"We must begin by recognising existing insecurities and frustrations are not imagined, or insignificant."
