The senior Turnbull government tactician Christopher Pyne has said a double-dissolution election remains “a live option”, as the Coalition struggles to defend its handling of tax reform.  A day after Scott Morrison was ridiculed for saying he would not sell the Australian people a unicorn, the treasurer revisited the fantasy theme as he declared he was determined to curb new spending and rein in the “excesses” of some tax concessions.  Related: Scott Morrison says Labor 'selling a unicorn' with negative gearing savings  “I can sell them a fantasy or whatever you want to call it, pixie horses, whatever your preferred analogy is, but I’m not going to spin the public a line that there is some simple answer to getting expenditure down,” Morrison told 3AW on Friday.  “It’s a long, hard, drilling through hardboards process.”  The government has now comprehensively ruled out increasing the goods and services tax and is seeking to lower expectations of wide-ranging tax reform, with the details due to be spelled out in the May budget.  Pyne, who is the industry minister and leader of the house, said the government would not rushed into making announcements on taxation just because of pressure from the media and commentators.  But he also noted the government retained the option of dissolving both houses of parliament and triggering an election based on the Coalition’s stalled workplace relations legislation.  “That is a live option; of course it is,” Pyne told the Nine Network’s Today program on Friday.  “There are not only issues around savings measures, there is also the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Labor doesn’t want to clean up construction and building in Australia, they want the CFMEU to continue to be a lawful organisation on building and construction sites. That’s bad for productivity.”  When asked about the remarks on Friday, the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said a double dissolution was “available in circumstances where bills have been rejected within the appropriate time period ... but at the moment your question is a hypothetical one”.  Calling a double dissolution would be a high-stakes decision and the timetable is difficult.  The earliest date for a normal general election for the House of Representatives and half of the Senate is 6 August, but the constitution gives the government the option of dissolving both houses to resolve legislative deadlocks.  The attempt to create a registered organisations commission to crack down on unions already provides the government with a trigger, because the same bill has been rejected in two Senate votes held more than three months apart.  The government is also preparing to try again to get Senate support to reintroduce the Howard-era Australian Building and Construction Commission, which if blocked would create another trigger.  The ABC election analyst Antony Green has pointed out that the dissolution of both houses was not allowed in the last six months of a parliament, so the procedure would have to be invoked on or before 11 May – the day after the budget.  That could allow an election to be held in June or July, although Malcolm Turnbull would have to lock in an unusually long campaign with polling day on 2, 9 or 16 July to avoid the risk of prevent the Senate and House of Representatives terms from getting out of alignment.  The government is working with the Greens and the independent senator Nick Xenophon on legislation to change Senate voting rules to counter the rise of micro-parties, which, if passed, would increase the appeal of dissolving both houses.  The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said his party was ready to fight an election, but called on the government to stop threatening to call a snap poll “to cover up their lack of action on the economy”.  Related: Four things we learnt from Scott Morrison's first speech to the National Press Club | Lenore Taylor  “Labor’s not afraid of an election but the Liberals are afraid of the budget. They need to tell us what their economic plans are,” Shorten said.  “What do they stand for? They’re all waffle and no action.”  The Labor frontbencher, Anthony Albanese, said it was unclear why Turnbull had taken over from Tony Abbott “apart from getting the keys to the Lodge”.  “The whole of Australia was pleased when we got rid of Mr Angry and we got Mr Smiley, but now we know what we have got is Mr Waffle,” Albanese told the Nine Network.  Morrison, who used a National Press Club speech this week to signal that only “modest” income tax cuts would be possible, said the election would be held after the budget so people could have their say on the reform package.  Related: Coalition distances itself from previous bracket creep warnings  The treasurer said addressing bracket creep – whereby people are pushed into higher tax brackets as inflation drives up wages – remained one of his key goals.  The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, also said he continued to believe bracket creep was a “drag on growth”, a day after suggesting it was not as big a problem now that wage inflation was low.  Attempting to clean up his previous comments, Cormann told Sky News he had seen some “strange” interpretations of what he had said, and he wanted to make clear he was not playing down the importance of bracket creep.
Christopher Pyne says government could dissolve both houses of parliament using workplace relations trigger, as the treasurer returns to unicorn theme