The taxpayer-funded advertising campaign would include families, workers and other archetypes of the voting public reacting to newsreader announcements, Murray said. Against national interest: Scott Morrison has rejected the sale of S. Kidman and Co's cattle properties twice. Credit:Andrew Meares Senior government ministers would not confirm the report on Tuesday morning. "The figures being thrown around in that story last night are not ones that I have heard at any time," Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told Sky News. Employment Minister Michaelia Cash said: "I have not seen any of this and I cannot confirm it." A spokesman for Treasurer Scott Morrison told Fairfax Media the government would not respond to speculative reports and the budget would be handed down on May 3.

The leaked advertisement script would seem to back up a report in The Australian Financial Review on Tuesday that Mr Morrison will reduce the amount of debt that multinational corporations can load on to their Australian operations to 50 per cent from 60 per cent. The hit to so-called thin capitalisation would discourage companies from shifting tax-deductible debt to Australian shores. A Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance is due to hand its final report to the government this week. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull previously criticised Labor's proposed changes to thin capitalisation, telling the Parliament that Treasury had advised they would "hurt the economy, crimp investment and cost jobs". Labor has seized on the apparent advertisement leak as a sign of dysfunction within the government, on what is widely seen as the first day of an unofficial election campaign. The Turnbull government scored its preferred trigger for a double dissolution election on Monday night when the Australian Building and Construction Commission bill was rejected by the Senate for a second time. Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen described the report as "the biggest budget leak since 1980" and said it was presumably designed to undermine the Treasurer. Manager of opposition business Tony Burke told Radio National the reported advertisement was "purely an election strategy" spruiking measures that will not have been implemented before the campaign commences. "If that's all it is, it should be paid for by the Liberal Party, not the taxpayer," Mr Burke said.