Treasurer Joe Hockey wants Bill Shorten to explain how he will fix the budget when everything the Labor leader has said so far is going to make it worse.
Mr Shorten will formally reply to the government's second budget when he addresses parliament on Thursday evening.
As far as Mr Hockey is concerned the opposition leader talks about budget repair while also wanting to spend more, have bigger deficits and create more government debt.
"Frankly there is no magic pudding here," the treasurer told reporters in Canberra.
Cabinet colleague Malcolm Turnbull agreed, saying Mr Shorten was in some sort of "blissful la la land".
"Some people have compared this building to Hogwarts but it's not a magical place," he told reporters in Canberra referring to the fictional school of Harry Potter.
Mr Shorten says he will use his speech to attack government plans to limit access to taxpayer-funded parental leave and cut family benefit payments.
"We all know that it's been a tortured journey with Tony Abbott," he told reporters of the prime minister's commitment to paid parental leave.
Mr Abbott didn't want to tackle millionaires but when it came to "retail workers in the high street" he had his hand in their pockets.
But Mr Shorten does support the government's small business package of tax concessions, saying it is going in the right direction.
He also wants to see more detail on budget changes to subsidised medicines and the aged pension.
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