Scott Morrison looked to have killed it, and most thought Malcolm Turnbull had put it down as well, but it seems the GST is a candle that just won't blow out.

Speaking on television on Monday night, cabinet minister Michaelia Cash breathed fresh life into the politically toxic tax hike her colleagues, and the public too, had assumed was now officially off the agenda.

Defending the Turnbull government's fast atrophying reform muscle, the Employment Minister from the party's right faction rejected the assertion that the government was "at sea" on tax reform and other difficult issues, instead explaining that it was having a national conversation with the people for which it was receiving "positive feedback".