Rumours are swirling that the government may reconsider its superannuation tax changes that will hit those with balances above $3 million with new taxes, including taxing unrealised capital gains.

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Abandoning this policy change would be the right call: the supporting rationale for it is weak and largely incoherent.

Yet these changes, and other tax rumours doing the rounds - including perennial favourites like the need to reform the capital gains tax discount or "close loopholes" - indicate the government does not appreciate scale of the economic and other challenges facing Australia.

The country faces genuine, serious economic policy problems.

The budget is in serious structural deficit. Productivity has stalled. Our tax system heavily taxes productive income earners; especially those on average or above incomes, and companies.

Spending is increasingly growing, with depressingly little to show for it.

The ideas being floated (either by government or those hoping the government will be dragged along) to supposedly address these issues are manifestly inadequate.

These ideas are like tax thought bubbles floating around the public square. Much like soap bubbles, once popped they leave almost no trace of their existence.

Worse still, most of the "reforms" being floated are also bad policy ideas.

Labor has taken some of the changes to recent elections, such as restrictions on negative gearing and capital gains tax increases, but the public has decisively rejected them.

And the public was right to rebuff them: they cannot solve the problem of housing affordability that they were proposed to address.

Of course, as we saw with the 20-year saga of the GST, should the government persist with these tax changes it may be possible to wear down the public to the point........

© Canberra Times