For Tanya and Andrew Conte, this year's budget is essential viewing.

The newlyweds from Altona, in the safe Labor seat of Gellibrand in Melbourne's west, have a $420,000 mortgage, a $380,000 Pascoe Vale investment property they bought with another couple in July 2012, and plans to start a family.

Concerns: Tanya and Andrew Conte. Credit:Mal Fairclough

So when Treasurer Wayne Swan reaches the dispatch box, the Contes will be listening closely to hear how the government plans to ease what they say are soaring cost-of-living pressures, fund reforms to education and disability care, and explain how a promised surplus has turned into a deficit expected to reach into the billions.

"Child care is the biggest thing," said the 25-year-old Ms Conte. "We are putting off kids because it's not even worth me going back to work to pay for the child care. If almost my entire wage is going on that, I would rather be home with our child."