Turnbull turns to 'hyperbowl'

Malcolm Turnbull has turned to what Julia Gillard called "hyperbowl" to try to ensure Labor ended the parliamentary week a little bruised.

The prime minister started with a friendly question about what he calls the new economy.

Ah, the new economy. He repeated the phrase, rolling it round his palate like a rare red.

It offers, he went on, our children and grandchildren the greatest opportunities imaginable. The government's innovation agenda is generating more and better jobs, encouraging innovation and inspiring people to have a go.

Talk about a glass half full.

But Turnbull was only warming up.

His main target was Labor's negative gearing policy. Turnbull, Scott Morrison and assorted other ministers have been at it all week, if at times in rather uncoordinated fashion.

On Thursday Turnbull widened the attack over an issue that's so far been confined to housing while also raising the rhetoric.

He accused Labor of false advertising for calling its policy a plan for housing affordability when it was really much broader.

Every asset class except new housing would be affected, he declared in tones normally reserved for announcing the end of the world.

Borrowing for shares, or to start a business, or buy a commercial truck. Everything would lose the ability to negatively gear.

"This is an assault on private enterprise, an assault on freedom," he declared.

In case you didn't get the message, a few minutes later it became a measure to "crash entrepreneurship" and a "dramatic, extensive attack on the entire Australian economy".

Others joined in, if with less sense of the apocalypse.

Barnaby Joyce accused Labor of "Zoolander economics", while Morrison played the man, calling Chris Bowen "hairy chinned and hair chested".

As Bowen now sports a beard, at least half of that little sally is accurate.