Living costs mount and govt support drops. Can the budget turn either around?

As the Treasurer puts the final touches on the budget he will hand down on May 14, the Albanese government is under pressure in the polls amid higher-than-expected inflation, bracket creep, record-high rents and no relief in sight for people struggling to pay their mortgages.

Mr Chalmers faces a difficult balancing act as he works to address concerns about the relentless increases to everyday living costs, while the Coalition attacks the government for not doing enough to slow inflation.

He carefully ranks the priorities of the budget as being first to fight inflation, then to ease cost-of-living pressures "in a way that takes the edge off inflationary pressures" - rather than exacerbating them.

"The centrepiece of our cost-of-living help will be a tax cut for every Australian taxpayer to help with the cost of living," the Treasurer said, referring to the revamped stage three tax cuts legislated in February.

"We now have another week or two to finalise any other cost-of-living help that we can provide in a responsible and affordable and meaningful way."

Energy rebates, expanded access to childcare subsidies and tweaks to the indexation of university HECS fees are among the cost-of-living relief measures being considered.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said the budget would lay down "the foundations that will see our economy grow", with investments in healthcare and local green manufacturing - the latter of which the Productivity Commission has criticised.

Professor Tim Harcourt, chief economist at the Institute for Public Policy and Governance at the University of Technology Sydney, said while the government was under pressure to "be seen to be doing something on cost-of-living relief, the reality is, you can't do a lot."

While the budget would likely contain "mini relief packages to get people through to the next election", Professor Harcourt said, the government would need to tackle the longer-term challenges of inflation, interest rates and housing affordability.

The opposition is ramping up pressure on the government to "take inflation seriously".

Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor on Friday seized on new data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development showing bracket creep had slugged Australian workers with an average 7.6 per cent increase in tax paid last year.

Earlier this week, he said Australians "are feeling deep pain" from inflation and the cost of living. "You can't put a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, you've got to go to the source of the problem," he said.

The Reserve Bank Board will meet a week before the federal budget and economists say it is unlikely to deliver an interest rate cut anytime soon, after the Australian Bureau of Statistics this week released Consumer Price Index for the March quarter showing annual inflation of 3.6 per cent.

"We are making progress and we see that in the fact that last quarter inflation had a four in front of it, now it's got a three in front of it," the Treasurer said on Wednesday. "It had a six in front of it when we took office a couple of years ago."

Advocacy groups - along with the government's own Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee - are ramping up calls for increased support to Jobseeker and Commonwealth Rent Assistance.

Australian Council of Social Services chief executive Dr Cassandra Goldie said more than a million people relying on income support "are barely surviving".

Mr Chalmers quietly released the committee's report, which recommended "a substantial increase" to Jobseeker and an additional rent assistance hike, on Friday.

On the committee is Professor Peter Whiteford from the Australian National University's Crawford School of Public Policy, who said Jobseeker - which pays $762.70 a fortnight for a single person with no children - remained "inadequate".

ANU associate professor Ben Phillips, who is also on the committee, told The Canberra Times rent assistance "probably needs to go up a further 20 per cent", saying last year's 15 per cent hike - projected to cost $2.7 billion over five years and the largest in more than 30 years - was not enough.

One lever the government had to address housing affordability, Professor Harcourt said, was putting the brakes on migration after the post-COVID boom added more than half a million people to Australia's population in 2022-23.

"Suddenly, international students game back and the traditional Australian immigration tap got put back on - and that's fine in good times," he said.

"But when there's difficulties with housing stock and cost of living pressures with building materials, people really feel it ... Immigration is creating more housing demand and we can't keep up with in terms of supply."

The budget would need to find a long-term migration forecast that factored in these pressures, Professor Harcourt said.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil said the budget would show the nation was on track to halve total migration intake by June 2025.

That would bring net migration down to 250,000, just ahead of the 200,000 which the opposition says should be the target.

"Migration is too high and we're taking action to bring it back to sustainable levels," the minister said.

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Getting the balance right is a matter of urgency for Mr Chalmers as the government takes a battering from voters concerned about the cost of living.

The latest Resolve Political Monitor commissioned by Nine newspapers put Labor's primary vote at 30 per cent and the Coalition's at 36 per cent, putting them 50:50 in two-party terms.

On May 14, the Treasurer will need to convince the millions of Australians who are struggling to make ends meet that better days are just around the corner.