It certainly struck a chord with the social services sector which was highly critical of the government's indifference to rising homelessness and housing affordability in Tuesday's budget.

The St Vincent de Paul Society rushed to praise the opposition leader on Friday morning with national president Claire Victory saying the establishment of the Housing Australia Future Fund and building of 20,000 social housing properties over the next five years is a "much-needed and welcome" commitment to addressing the shortfall of 500,000 homes nationally.

With one-third of single parent families living in poverty only one-in-100 can hope to access the two per cent deposit scheme to be offered under the Coalition's Family Home guarantee.

At a time when 1.3 million Australians are still unemployed and a further 1.36 million are underemployed Labor has returned to its core values as the party of the underdog.

This, along with pledges to take stronger action on wages growth, increase youth employment through support for apprentices in the green energy sector, criminalise wage theft and a commitment to constitutional recognition for the Indigenous community, are clear points of difference with the government.

They have put to bed fears that because the government had invested so much in areas traditionally considered to be Labor party strengths the opposition would not have anywhere to go.

It is also an agenda which Mr Albanese can sell well and while his reply didn't knock any significant holes in the budget it chipped the paint in quite a few places.

That said, Labor's vulnerabilities are in the areas not touched on in the reply, including taxation after tax policy played a major role in Labor losing in 2019.

Will Labor support the stage three tax cuts? Would it tax more or less than the LNP? Where does it stand on negative gearing, CGT and dividend imputation now? We've been told to wait and see.

That could be a dangerous play given experience has shown while Australians applaud compassionate rhetoric they are more likely to respond to a hit to the wallet than an appeal to the heart.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: