The government has defended its first budget after being accused of raising a white flag on providing relief from rising power prices and abandoning election pledges.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese fired back on Friday morning, labelling Peter Dutton's budget reply speech the weakest he has ever seen while in politics.
The opposition leader used his first budget reply speech on Thursday night to attack the Albanese government's budget for not providing adequate cost of living measures at a time of rising inflation and electricity costs.
Mr Dutton said the government had reneged on key election pledges to lower electricity bills by $275 a year.
"Labor's scratching around for opportunities to try and give themselves cover to get out of their promise," he told the ABC on Friday.
"The problem is, as Labor finds out when they get into government, they can't manage the economy and they certainly can't manage electricity and gas prices. They've raised a white flag."
Treasurer Jim Chalmers defended his work and said it wasn't the end of the financial repair the nation needed.
"The budget was the beginning of laying the foundations for a better future, the budget was all about making our economy more resilient and our budget more responsible," he told reporters.
"It was an important start, we've got work to do, but the hard work has begun."
The budget provided forecasts retail electricity prices will increase by more than 50 per cent during the next two years, while retail gas prices will go up by 40 per cent.
Labor pitched its first budget as being responsible with providing targeted cost of living measures without adding to already decades-high levels of inflation.
Mr Dutton said more gas supply needed to be brought into the energy market to ensure power prices stayed down, as well as allow for debate on allowing some levels of nuclear energy into the grid.
"I don't want to see families going without power. I don't want to see businesses have their power supply disrupted," he said.
"We need to bring more (gas) supply into the market. I think most economists recognise that."
Mr Albanese said the coalition hadn't outlined any plan for the future.
"It's the first budget reply I've seen where there were no new initiatives, no new policies," he told the Seven Network.
"He had nothing to say about the future and Peter Dutton is going to have to do a lot better than that ... we had a budget on Tuesday night that fulfilled all of our commitments."
The prime minister noted the coalition continued to support the first home buyer scheme that allows people to access superannuation, despite evidence it would lift house prices while damaging people's retirement funds.
