The violent imagery flowed so thick and fast that Morrison's cri de coeur should have come with an M15+ classification warning. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, left, and Treasurer Scott Morrison. Credit:Andrew Meares Even Hollywood blood-and-gore merchant Quentin Tarantino, one suspects, would have been impressed by ScoMo's take on Kill Bill. "Bill Shorten has declared war on business and as a result he's declared war on growth," Morrison, riding high following the release of better-than-expected economic growth figures, proclaimed to reporters in Sydney. "This is the Leader of the Opposition who has no plan for jobs and growth and what he's done with his agenda for $100 billion of higher taxes over the next 10 years is to declare war on growth in our economy."

Opposing a reduction in corporate tax, we learnt, is just the beginning of Generalissimo Shorten's War on Everything. Illustration: Ron Tandberg Homing in on the opposition's policy to wind back negative gearing, Morrison explained: "Labor's approach is to take a sledgehammer and to do it out of the politics and ideology of envy ... It's a war on growth, it's a war on capital, it's a war on mums and dads who just want to invest in a property to ensure their betterment over into their retirement or whatever their purpose is". Lest anyone accuse him of subtlety, Morrison went nuclear. Labor, he explained, "will continue to seek to attack growth with these toxic taxes that will be a toxin for our growth going forward".

"Every single thing Labor is doing, particularly through their war on business and their war on growth using tax as their bullets, is going to retard from growth and detract from growth," he said. All up, Morrison used the word "war" 14 times. By contrast, Winston Churchill used the w-word a measly nine times in his famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech. Neville Chamberlain barely bothered in his 1939 declaration of war on Germany, using it just four times. Turnbull later joined the fray during a visit to a mattress factory in western Sydney. "The first casualties of Shorten's war on business are Australian jobs," he said."It is a fact: he has declared war on business."