Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey warned that debt and deficits in Australia would career out of control and hit $667 billion unless dramatic action was taken.

Remember his $1 billion a month debt interest payments line. Former Howard government treasurer Peter Costello made the same case in 1996 and a decade later boasted that Labor's $96 billion in debt had been wiped out, freeing up $9 billion a year in interest payments.

In 2008 the Rudd government axed billions of dollars in Howard government programs but redirected the money. A lot of the cuts involve simply redirecting money to reflect the ideology of the new government.

That explains why the Hockey budget, and Treasurer Peter Gutwein's budget in Tasmania, included some big spending programs, on top of savings. Simply redirecting expenditure.

The Gutwein budget includes $745 million in savings over the forward estimates to 2017-18. This is a huge amount of money to take out of the Tasmanian economy, even if some of it is being redirected.

Next financial year alone the savings target is almost $200 million. Treasurers always argue that the budget is unsustainable in its current form.

While Joe Hockey has warned of a budget crisis his opponents say Australia's debt level is healthy by international standards, with Australia's gross debt to GDP the third lowest among OECD countries.

Tasmania's debt level is not significant, but both major parties rarely canvass the massive public sector superannuation debt in the same equation.

The Gutwein budget is expansionary in some areas, but based on past experience the government is too afraid to tackle taxation or major asset sales. Instead, almost $1 billion will be cut from the budget by 2018.

Unless the cuts are sensibly determined and managed they could hurt a fragile, struggling economy like Tasmania.