Malcolm Turnbull says the federal government's biggest misstep was failing to make the case for a tough first budget, blaming every member of the government including himself for not doing a good enough job.
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And the former opposition leader, who many in and outside the Liberal Party regard as Prime Minister Tony Abbott's chief undeclared leadership rival, cited his own reforms of Australia Post and the National Broadband Network as examples of how to make a case for change.
In a speech to the Brisbane Club on Wednesday, Mr Turnbull said Treasurer Joe Hockey's first budget had attempted to address the rising cost of pensions, aged care and health services.
"Evidently by doing so it disappointed many in the community. A number of its most important measures, which would have generated savings over the forward estimates of more than $25 billion, have been unable to secure support from the Senate crossbenches and have been abandoned or modified," he said.
However, it was "in no way correct to say that the 2014-15 budget was a failure".
"The more fundamental problem the 2014-15 budget faced was that the public was not persuaded tough measures were necessary in the first place," he said.
"We – and I include myself and every member of the government in this criticism – did not do a good enough job in explaining the scale of the fiscal problem the nation faces, and the urgency of taking corrective action.
"In my view, the failure to effectively make the case for budget repair was our biggest misstep, because it was a threshold we never crossed."
But Mr Turnbull said the government had "learnt our lesson" following the release of the Intergenerational Report last week, which he said would give Mr Hockey a "solid platform" from which to reboot the budget debate.
In contrast, Mr Turnbull said that with NBN reforms he had thrown out the "ideology, lies and spin".
And soon after becoming Communications Minister he had asked Australia Post's chief executive Ahmed Fahour "to lay out the truth about its letters business in public, loudly and repeatedly and they did so".
"So last week when we announced radical changes [stamp prices to rise to $1 and delivery times to slow down by two days] there was broad acceptance, despite the pain involved."
Mr Turnbull said that, once an issue was explained often enough and "people understand there is a genuine problem and 'something' must be done, you can have an intelligent discussion about what that something might be - and, just as importantly, your opponents will face public pressure to come up with their own 'something' if they are not prepared to support yours".
Since surviving a spill motion that was defeated 61-39 about a month ago, Mr Abbott has mostly had clear air from internal critics to turn around his government's fortunes.
But the Coalition still lags badly in published opinion polling and there have been several significant missteps that have drawn criticism, including attacks on Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs, the handling of the tender process for the construction of the next generation of submarines and the sacking of former chief whip Philip Ruddock.
