Treasurer Joe Hockey is under fire for launching a taxpayer-funded public relations push to sell the need for tax reform.

Treasury bureaucrats have revealed Mr Hockey personally directed that a strategy be devised to accompany the imminent launch of the Coalition's tax white paper process.

Treasurer Joe Hockey. Credit:Daniel Munoz

So far, $650,000 has been allocated for focus groups and a slick communications strategy to "convince people of the need for reform", a Treasury official told a Senate estimates committee on Thursday.

The Australian Financial Review revealed on Friday that a public information campaign, including TV commercials, will accompany the intergenerational report and the government recently came under fire for spending $8 million on an advertising blitz to promote its proposed higher education reforms.