The treasurer, Scott Morrison, says the government is not interested in delivering a company tax cut that would require firms to give their workers a pay rise, and sees no reason to adopt a more interventionist approach to setting minimum wages.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Morrison said the government was focused on the circumstances of middle-income earners, who felt squeezed by prices increases after a long period of wages being flat, and would aim to deliver income tax relief as soon as it was fiscally responsible to do so.

But he said there was no need for the government to adopt more interventionist policies to boost wages growth despite the imperative of boosting consumption in order to boost the economy.

Morrison acknowledged there was a live debate among economists about whether the orthodoxy of economic growth leading to a tightening in the labour market leading to higher wages for workers still held, given wages stagnation had been a sustained global phenomenon in the wake of the financial crisis.

The treasurer also acknowledged there had been a “dislocation” in the traditional demand-and-supply mechanisms after the financial crisis but he argued things in Australia were now resuming “normal transmission” and insisted his view was evidence-based, not a “hunch”.

“I don’t discount there being a dislocation post the global financial crisis but I don’t consider that a permanent phenomenon and I don’t think the evidence bears that out,” Morrison said.

Despite polling indicating that people on below average incomes think their incomes have gone backwards, Morrison said he saw no need to take a more proactive approach on minimum wages because the current process “is delivering a good outcome”.

“If you think about where is wage growth going to come from, it’s got to come from a growing economy. The money has to be there,” the treasurer said. “By seeking to artificially impose [wage increases], well the swings and roundabouts approach would mean you end up with a zero-sum outcome”.

He said the role of government was to create the best environment for business “to ensure wages can lift, not artificially, but sustainably”.

Morrison flatly rejected the idea that the government could pursue a company tax cut that delivered the benefit for companies prepared to give their workforce a wage increase. “It is a highly interventionist method.

“It’s at odds with the way the Liberal and National parties would pursue growth in the economy.”

When it was pointed out that, as treasurer, he had intervened in the banking sector and in the energy market, including threatening to impose export controls in the gas market in an effort to boost supply, Morrison said those examples were different, because “they are not what you’d call very free market sectors”.

He said interventions in highly regulated sectors were one thing but “more broadly in the economy, when the government starts telling private companies how they should be spending their money and that they know better than them about how to grow their business, then I think we’ve got a problem”.

“It goes against every economic instinct of the Coalition to tell companies how they should be spending their money and growing their businesses,” he said.

He said recent research about Germany’s labour market indicated the benefits of a company tax cut were passed through to the workforce and helped to address economic inequality, and he argued that only “ideologues” would focus on a record of a treasurer intervening in some sectors to create outcomes but not others.

The treasurer acknowledged that company tax cuts were not politically popular but he said the government would stay the course. “You have to do what you think is in the economic interests of the country.”

Morrison said he was a pragmatic treasurer, focused on achieving outcomes. “You’ve got to be practical as a treasurer but you have to bring a clear set of principles which you know work, and you’ve got to stick to them, which is what I do.”