Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has painted a doomsday scenario of Australia under a Bill Shorten government, claiming a "cocky" Labor leader is relying on the politics of envy to propel him to the Lodge as people forget the failures of socialism.
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In an extraordinary speech designed to reset the political debate over fairness and economic management, and tackle head on Mr Shorten's prescriptions for how to fight inequality, Senator Cormann argued the Opposition Leader had trashed the Hawke-Keating legacy and abandoned economic reform.
The dramatic picture, delivered in a speech to the Sydney Institute on Wednesday evening, is arguably the most trenchant criticism yet of Mr Shorten's economic program and comes from one of the most senior and respected members of the Turnbull government.
The Opposition Leader is riding high in the opinion polls and has made a series of bold policy announcements, such as a crackdown on trusts to reduce taxable income and a promise for an initial referendum on whether to become a republic in his first term.
The scathing critique can be understood as both a sign the Turnbull government wants change the conversation about how to fight inequality and that the government is nervous Mr Shorten's message is resonating with voters.
Senator Cormann charged Mr Shorten with making a "deliberate and cynical political judgement that enough Australians have forgotten the historical failure of socialism" and exploiting the politics of envy.
"His rhetoric is the divisive language of haves and have nots. It is socialist revisionism at its worst," that Australians would see through.
The Finance Minister said that Mr Shorten was effectively telling Australians it was OK to "go after successful people" and framing the success of business as inconsistent with that of working people.
"This is dangerously wrong and a deliberate flirtation with the playbook of Bernie Sanders in the United States and Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom," he said, and had taken Labor back to "its failed socialist roots".
The Finance Minister even predicted that Labor's policies would make it harder for successful Australians to live here and that "some will leave Australia and go where hard work, risk-taking and success are more highly valued and rewarded. We will be waving them goodbye at airports around the country."
"You don't get a strong and successful economy by taxing the life out of it, or by putting limits on people's ambition," he said.
In addition to a crackdown on the use of trusts for tax minimisation, Mr Shorten has promised a future Labor government would axe tax breaks for negative gearing and capital gains tax, raise the top marginal tax rate to 49.5 per cent and has declined to say if he would roll back tax cuts for businesses with a turnover up to $50 million.
The government claims Labor's promises amount to plans to impose $150 billion in new taxes if it wins the next election, but this figure has been disputed by the opposition.
Senator Cormann said that while Labor claimed to be targeting millionaires, he was actually going after the Australian middle class - and that even if he was targeting millionaires, France's recent experiment with a 75 per cent tax on millionaires was a failure abandoned after two years.
He also vowed the Coalition would stay the course and not abandon policies designed to spur economic growth, such as business tax cuts and paying down the federal debt to ensure intergenerational equality.
