As Treasurer Jim Chalmers prepares to hand down his fifth budget on Tuesday, the government is widely tipped to enact changes to negative gearing, capital gains taxes and family trusts.
Despite ruling out such changes before the 2025 federal election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said reform was needed to make it easier for young people to enter the housing market.
"We do need to do more and use every lever at our disposal," he told ABC Radio on Monday.
Mr Albanese said issues of intergenerational unfairness would "continue to be entrenched without reform".
"For a long period of time, young people have tried to save for a home,'' he said.
"Another year has passed since the election and not enough has changed.
"If we do change our position on any policy, we will explain why it is that that is occurring."
Mr Albanese said delivering only promises taken to the election was not the limit of ambition for the government.
"We know people are under pressure and the easy path is to say 'oh well, we'll just sit back and watch that occur'," he said.
"The difficult decision, but the right decision, is to do the right thing with the right policies to deliver, and clearly, people are frustrated."
The government's broken promise not to touch the tax breaks amounted to a betrayal of Australians' trust, shadow treasurer Tim Wilson said.
"This budget is now complete disarray because of its series of broken promises, and Australians are seeing directly through what the government is putting forward," he told reporters.
The Greens have been pushing for changes to capital gains and negative gearing for years, so would likely offer Labor a path through the Senate to legislate them.
But Greens leader Larissa Waters said the party would not support tinkering around the edges.
"People deserve significant reform to actually fix the housing crisis," she said.
The budget will provide another $500 million in funding to implement environmental laws, which the treasurer said would help speed up approvals for housing, energy and critical minerals projects.
Passed in late 2025 after a tumultuous five-year gestation process, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act promised to reduce layers of duplication where proponents had to secure approvals from both the federal and state governments.
The new environmental regime would reduce compliance costs and cut red tape to enable easier and faster building, making Australia a more attractive place in which to invest, Dr Chalmers said.
But critical bilateral agreements that will give greater powers to the states to handle the assessment and approval of both layers of regulation are yet to be signed, meaning the full benefits of the reforms have not been realised.
Part of the budget boost will go to the states to fund the additional staff and resources needed to take on the extra approvals work and help convince them to sign up.
The Albanese government has already signed a memorandum of understanding with Western Australia and is optimistic about inking bilateral agreements with other states, but negotiations have stalled with Queensland.
The Queensland and federal governments have not been in talks about a new bilateral agreement in weeks as Premier David Crisafulli demands oil exploration projects be included in a fast-tracked approvals pathway in the environment act.
"Until we have that dead hand of the (act) removed, the ability to really get cracking in the Taroom Trough (oil basin) will be hindered," he told reporters on Sunday.
The federal government is warning Queensland's decision to launch a year-long state productivity inquiry into the act could further delay the implementation of the faster approvals pathway.
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