Scott Morrison really needs to stop treating the Australian people as mugs.

Today Mr Morrison has argued that house prices falls in Sydney of 5 per cent have been necessary while any price falls under Labors negative gearing reforms would be a sledgehammer and dangerous.

This is the neatest and most condensed example of hypocrisy going around.

Shorter Scott Morrison: if prices fall under the Liberals it is because he is a genius. If they fall under Labor it is a disaster.

And it was only a few years ago that Mr Morrison was publicly arguing that there were excesses in negative gearing.

Scott Morrisons pathetic and baseless scare campaign has been called out by none other than the Australian Treasury. Mr Morrisons own Treasury department officials said in an analysis of Labors policies that the price changes are likely to be small.

The Turnbull Government asked for and received this advice from Treasury at the time Labor announced its policies in 2016, and because it didnt support his outrageous sledgehammer slogan, he sat on it and the advice only eked out under Freedom of Information earlier this year.

Its the latest in a long line of desperate politicisation of the Treasury from Scott Morrison. When hes not appointing his Chief-of-Staff as Treasury Secretary or asking Treasury to cost Labors tax policies hes sitting on Treasury advice which doesnt support his outlandish claims.

Independent think tanks such as the Grattan Institute think that the house price impacts of reforming negative gearing would be fairly modest, and at most could see house prices 2 per cent lower than would otherwise be the case.

Labors reforms to negative gearing are moderate, sensible and will help boost housing supply. All current residential investments are fully grandfathered meaning those investors will be still be able to access the current negative gearing arrangements. Future property investors will continue to be able to access negative gearing for new residential stock, ensuring that the focus is on investments that generate construction jobs and add to the housing stock.