What happens inside the budget lock-up?

Updated May 15, 2013 09:03:53

The press gallery is overflowing and the coffee line is enormous.

"When does one plus one equal three?" quips the guy in front of me.

"When you’re Wayne Swan. Ha ha."

Hilarious, I know.

But bad jokes seem part and parcel of budget day.

"I know you are all keen to be here," laughs a Treasury official, as soon as we've surrendered our phones.

Hilarious again.

The moaning about the 'budget lock-up' has reverberated around the press gallery for weeks.

The lock-down starts in relative silence.

There's only the occasional cry of "Ooh the deficit is bigger than expected" and "Oh look, they’ve cut the baby bonus", as everyone flicks through the budget books.

Wayne Swan appears 70 minutes in to help manage the message.

"I'm proud of this budget," he says as he does the rounds of the room.

"We're thinking about the future."

I'm thinking about lunch.

I didn't bring any and there are still five hours to go.

I find a Treasury official.

"How big is the blow-out in the immigration budget? How much has the mining tax raised? And how much is allocated for advertising for DisabilityCare and education funding," I ask.

"Just the bad news then," interjects a nearby Labor staffer with a smile.

It's a fair point.

But then again, governments rarely leave the good news hidden in the budget books.

"You should save your work every 30 minutes." Another wonderful piece of advice from an official.

I shouldn't have been a smartarse though – I return to my computer to find a handful of hard-won numbers missing.

The Treasurer's budget press conference is, well, cramped.

"They could get a bigger room, couldn't they?" says one journalist as we pack in.

After 45 minutes of "jobs", "growth" and "thinking for the future", Wayne Swan departs to prepare for his speech.

The rest is a bit of a blur as we rush to hit our deadlines.

There are some cold meat pies, we meet a few ministers, more numbers are crunched and there are some very funny quips about 'swan-songs' and 'swan-dives'.

Then suddenly it's 7:30 and we are released into the arms of dozens of lobbyists and the Opposition.

Is the lock-up pointless?

"Yes," say the few senior journalists I ask.

Much of the bad budget news had already been leaked.

There also appeared to be little information that would cause financial markets to crash.

"It's one way the Government can sell its message," says a senior colleague.

"They have a captive audience, quite literally."

That's something a government rarely gets.

For that reason alone the six-hour budget spectacle is likely to continue.

Topics: budget, federal-parliament, federal-elections, parliament-house-2600

First posted May 15, 2013 08:58:04