The electorate has spoken, but Turnbull's speech shows he hasn't listened

Labor ought to support this omnibus bill, but if the budget repair task is as important as Turnbull said it was, and if he is truly ready to “reach across the aisle” in pursuit of “fiscal rationality”, he should be willing to take up some of Labor’s pre-election budget repair proposals too.

Labor’s proposal to reduce the capital gains tax discount (which even the Property Council of Australia is open to changing) could make the ideal starting point.

Turnbull signalled an undiminished determination to enact the ten-year program of reductions in the company tax rate, which was the centrepiece of the Coalition’s plan for “jobs and growth”.

He cited economist Chris Murphy (who did some of the modelling for the Henry Review) and the International Monetary Fund in support of his argument that reducing the tax rate on business will result in business investing more, and “you will get more jobs and higher wages”.

Yet there is little evidence that these arguments resonated with the Australian people during the election campaign. And the Treasury’s own modelling of the government’s proposals, released shortly after the most recent budget, suggests that the ultimate impact on economic activity and national income will be almost imperceptibly small.

Also, there is absolutely no evidence to support the government’s contention that preferentially targeting tax cuts on small businesses will have any positive impact on jobs or growth at all: that is an article of faith, plain and simple.

Likewise Turnbull’s advocacy of the Coalition’s innovation agenda, its defence white paper spending programs, and the pursuit of new free trade agreements, was entirely unchanged from before the election.

There was not a hint of any awareness that large swathes of the Australian electorate had been unpersuaded that these programs were the best way of tackling what Turnbull described as the “big economic challenges – and opportunities" the country faces.

Turnbull said he seeks to ensure that Australia doesn’t find itself “falling off the back of the pack of leading economies”. However, there appeared to be little overt recognition that some of the greatest difficulties he may encounter as he seeks to achieve this are posed by people on his own side of the political divide who refuse to countenance the idea of adopting policies like reform of superannuation, negative gearing and capital gains tax.

In his conclusion, he asked, rhetorically:

Is anybody really asserting that a focus on innovation is bad for the economy…?

Well, yes, prime minister. That’s exactly what a number of your more conservative backbenchers – especially those from outside of the major metropolitan areas – are asserting.