'Cocky' Bill Shorten wants to inflict socialism on a new generation, Mathias Cormann says

Finance minister says Labor leader has overreached in shift to the left - and a Jeremy Corbyn-style politics-of-envy campaign is doomed to fail

The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, says Bill Shorten is banking on enough young Australians forgetting the "historical failure of socialism" to prosecute a Jeremy Corbyn-style politics-of-envy campaign - which would deliver only "economic decline and social division".

Cormann used a strongly worded speech to the Sydney Institute on Wednesday night to posit that Shorten was intent on inflicting socialism on an unwitting new generation, declaring that the Labor leader has made the "deliberate and cynical political judgment that enough Australians have forgotten the historical failure of socialism".