And, like many such sound bites, it needs to be approached with caution.

Preaching to the converted at a Bloomberg Australia function, Mr Morrison painted a bleak picture of what would happen if the savings measures currently before the Parliament were blocked.

He maintained, despite Australia having weathered the global financial crisis in far better shape than the vast majority of other Western economies, the country was at a tipping point where the fate of generations as yet unborn hung in the balance.

"The period of this term could well prove to be the tipping point on the trajectory of debt our children and grandchildren will be saddled with," he warned.

"Once that debt fully takes hold, it will build its own momentum and will only grow more difficult to tame."

Many of the measures have previously proved unpalatable to the Labor Party and the crossbenchers because of the disproportionate effect they would have on the poorest members of society.

Initiatives such as axing the so called "clean energy supplement" for all new social security and welfare claimants have already been widely condemned as robbing from the poor to subsidise the rich.

Much of Mr Morrison's nightmare vision is based on an updated version of Joe Hockey's frequently satirised division of Australia into "lifters and leaners".

The new treasurer divides us into "those who pay tax and those who do not".

While he is fundamentally correct, Mr Morrison chose to ignore the fact this is largely driven by having an aging population.

Many of today's "non-payers" have worked hard all of their lives, paying for a range of national benefits including the Snowy Scheme, free health care, the pensions and unemployment cheques of millions of others and much else.

To suggest these people are, in Mr Hockey's parlance, "leaners", is a bit rich.

Having already done their bit for others, today's old age pensioners are entitled to expect an equivalent level of access to services that they funded for others.

With the obvious intent of last week's performance being to pressure the opposition into passing the budget savings measures it has previously opposed, the government risks paying a high price for its own past actions. Whenever the Rudd and Gillard governments sought co-operation from the then Abbott-led opposition the answer was always an unequivocal "no".

It has been suggested the most sensible path forward would be for Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten to meet behind closed doors to negotiate an agreement in the national interest.

While this is a commendable sentiment, it seems too much to hope for given the current state of politics in Australia.