Last week, in the lead up to the new parliament, the treasurer Scott Morrison sought to outline his economic vision. Unfortunately, rather than provide any clear ideas of where he sees the nation’s economy heading, the speech was a mishmash of internal inconsistencies, statistical misreadings, and statements which made less sense the more you paid attention to them.

The big take away from the speech was Morrison’s desire to ape Joe Hockey’s outlook of the world as being divided into two types. Where Joe Hockey talked of “lifters and leaners” Scott Morrison has decided that “there is a new divide – the taxed and the taxed nots”.

Sigh.

I guess then we can also say that there is a new divide in treasurers – those who simplistically view the world through ill-thought out binary oppositions, and those who don’t.

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Morrison’s shtick about net-taxpayers comes from the finding by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (Natsem) that 53% of households in Australia are net taxpayers – down from 56% in 2005.

Now suggesting that this means “more Australians are ... likely today to be net beneficiaries of the government than contributors” as Morrison did is dopey enough, but the treasurer went further. He argued it meant “on current settings, more Australians today are likely to go through their entire lives without ever paying tax than for generations”.

The problem is the Natsem modelling is a snapshot. It doesn’t look at people’s paying of tax throughout their lifetime.

Morrison’s use of the snapshot to suggest things about people’s lifetimes would be like looking at the current unemployment rate of 5.7% and saying the rate means you have a 5.7% chance of being unemployed at some point in your life.

Thus the treasurer arguing that “more Australians” are “never paying more tax than they receive in government payments” is a gross exaggeration.

Never? Really, treasurer?

The Natsem data shows the major reason for the decline in the number of net-taxpayers is the ageing population. While 53% of Australians are net-taxpayers, when you exclude those over 65 the figure rises to 67%:

Of course the overall rate of net-taxpayers is falling – since the start of the century the percentage of the Australian population over 65 has gone from 12.4% to 15%.

I look forward to Morrison suggesting we need to do something about those taxed-not pensioners.

But no.

Morrison didn’t even use his assertions to make a strong case for his changes to the taxation of superannuation – clearly one area where the “taxed-not” could be taxed more.

All he did was meekly refer to “improving the flexibility of superannuation” – a phrase so feeble that the only thing it lacks more than meaning is any conviction by Morrison towards his own policy.

Rather his target is “reining in the growth in welfare spending”.

Let us not forget that the most recent data from the department of social security shows the number of those on welfare has declined over the past 15 years:

And the one longitudinal study (that is, looking at how things change over the course of lifetimes) in Australia, the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) Survey by the Melbourne Institute, also fails to support the treasurer’s line of attack.

The latest survey report for the 2013-14 financial year found that 32% of individuals aged 18–64 were living in a household that received income support at some stage in that year – well down on the 38% of individuals in 2001.

The rest of Morrison’s speech was not much better for logical strength.

He spoke of some good sense about the fragilities of the Chinese economy – though when Morrison says “in China, events may prove far less predictable” one wonders how that stacks up against the prediction he made in parliament last year of the “prosperity and jobs that [the China-Australia free-trade] agreement will deliver”.

But elsewhere he struggled to stay consistent.

For example, he argued on the one hand that we must “get debt under control by returning the budget to balance through disciplined expenditure restraint”, but he later noted that “we have kept expenditure under control” and yet also that “expenditure as a share of the economy remains stubbornly high”.

So we must restrain our spending which is under control and stubbornly high?

He also suffered from having foolishly said last year in his first press conference that “we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem”.

Now he noted that forecasts for nominal GDP growth in the past two years were reduced from 5.25% to 2.5% due to “the reduction in the terms of trade, commodity prices, in wages and in profits”.

That reduction flows through to lower revenue via company and personal income tax. But Morrison cannot bring himself to admit error; thus he termed this not as a “revenue problem” but an “earnings problem”.

It’s a bit like saying you never called someone short, just that they lacked height.

Elsewhere he demonstrated his ability to say things, which, like an M. Night Shyamalan film, collapse the moment you subject them to any thought.

He agreed with “those in the banking sector who have said they believe the key to making this cultural shift is to restore banking as a profession”.

So banking is not a profession now, but it once was? When did it stop? And if that means something has gone wrong, why did Morrison also suggest that “we are in even better shape today when it comes to the resilience of our banking and financial system than we have ever been”?

So our bankers are no longer acting like professionals, and yet our banking system is in better shape today than ever before?

But perhaps the biggest logical car crash came near the beginning of the speech when, after outlining that Australians are becoming too complacent and have been split into the taxed and not-taxed, he asked:

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“Are we more interested in preserving the benefits of what the past 30 years of economic reform has given us, than relinquishing and reinvesting some of those dividends to create a stronger economy for both our own future and the generations that follow?”

Is Morrison actually saying we shouldn’t be interested in preserving the benefits of the past 30 years of “reform”?

And if he really is saying that we need to give up “the benefits” of this reform in order to create a stronger economy, that doesn’t say much for the worth of all that reform. So we have had 30 years of reform which delivered benefits that now need to be relinquished so we can have a stronger economy?

And what exactly are “the benefits”? Is Morrison suggesting the benefit of economic reform was welfare and people being taxed-not? If that is the case, then again, doesn’t that suggest the reform was basically a failure, given Morrison views welfare as a negative and decries the numbers of the taxed-not?

Or is he just saying we need to give up the benefits of reform in order to have more reform in order to benefit again later on?

What a scintillating sales pitch. And people wonder why voters are sceptical when they hear politicians talk about the need for reform.