About 1.30pm today, hundreds of journalists will reluctantly hand over their phones, disconnect from the internet and spend the next six hours locked up in specially prepared newsrooms in Canberra, Sydney and beyond.
It’s budget day, the busiest of the year for political journalists, and reporters have to sign up to a range of legal requirements (and submit to a few arcane rituals) just to get their foot in the door.
Preparing the document
The federal budget is a gigantic undertaking, with the first planning meetings of cabinet’s Expenditure Review Committee taking place in September. Hundreds of officials are involved in planning, developing, writing and running it.
Major themes for the budget start to be nailed down during the quiet weeks in January, and by March-April major decisions are being finalised in portfolios.
In the weeks before the budget, the attending media must register for the lock-up. This is not some tick and flick: everyone signs a legally binding contract pledging not to breach the embargo.
Budget day for journalists is the moment, after months of work by government behind the scenes (and weeks of both deliberate leaks and unauthorised scoops), that the document is released into the wild for public judgement.
My first time locked up was in 2008 and early on I was incredibly nervous, terrified I would miss a crucial measure that a competitor would find.
The nerves eased around 2010 when I found myself in the line to enter lock up next to John Kehoe (now the Australian Financial Review’s economics editor, but a baby journo at the time like me).
Kehoe looked at me and grinned as I explained my nerves and responded, in his laconic style, “it is a test, but we get to grade the government”. That helped.
Enter the storm
These days, I think of the budget day lockup as the moment where the press gallery enters the eye of a storm.
After weeks of frenzied activity in the lead up, journalists have all their electronic devices confiscated, lose internet access and all we can do is read the budget papers for six hours.
It’s a shrinkingly rare thing to have so much time to digest information, across the four main budget papers, the treasurer’s speech and the so-called “glossies” – smaller booklets that outline major initiatives. It’s necessary to get through hundreds of pages.
We aren’t flying blind. Treasury officials set up their own desks in the gallery so they can answer questions about that anomaly we spotted in budget paper No.4.
At 7.30pm, when the treasurer of the day rises to their feet in parliament to deliver their budget speech, the embargo lifts and we return to the world of electronic communications and constant updates.
Editors go into overdrive at this point, publishing and placing stories on the homepage, making final checks on print pages and keeping half an ear out for feedback as everyone from unions, the Business Council to Greenpeace and the Academy of Science (and hundreds of others) deliver their verdicts.
The storm will continue for the next few weeks, at least, and the news out of Canberra will be dominated by budget stories that range from backlash, stories of government horse-trading to secure enough votes in the Senate for this-or-that piece of legislation, and more.
The aftermath of Joe Hockey’s horror 2014 budget lasted much longer, given how badly it was delivered and received. Arguably, the backlash didn’t really finish until September 2015, when Hockey and then-prime minister Tony Abbott were removed by the Liberal Party room. It wasn’t all Hockey’s fault, that one – it was a real team effort.
What lock up used to be like… and how it has changed
It’s crazy-busy, but also mundane.
Once upon a time, a couple of hundred journalists would gather in parliament’s massive main committee room and a few smaller committee rooms.
IT experts would descend on Canberra from head offices around the country armed with dozens of laptops (and desktops before that) that would be set up in private computer networks that couldn’t connect to the outside world – but which could connect securely to computers in the head offices used to lay out pages and publish the next day’s newspaper.
The Canberra Times’ most junior reporter (me at the time) could end up seated one row over from ABC greats like Alan Kohler, Fran Kelly or Lyndal Curtis, or next to a reporter you’d never met working for an outlet you’d never heard of.
The buzz in the room was extraordinary, and hearing one of the big dogs from a rival organisation yell across the room their plans for their column or news trunk (the main story of the day) added a certain frisson.
Over cold pies, dodgy egg sandwiches and Allen’s snakes arrayed on a trolley out in a corridor, you’d bump into The Age’s Michelle Grattan or The Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher and nervously ask them what they thought of the budget, before agreeing profusely with whatever they said (so you didn’t sound stupid).
But COVID-19 put an end to the budget-day big room, and now people work from their own offices in the press gallery, which is level two on the Senate side of parliament. Lifts are shut down so you can’t leave the press gallery, and treasury officials are assigned to bureaus to watch journalists closely to ensure that market-sensitive information isn’t leaked from a hidden phone.
So what do you do in lock up?
First, from 1.30pm, I read the start of budget paper No.1, which contains key headline figures such as unemployment forecasts, inflation, the size of the surplus or deficit (usually the latter) and other key information.
Then, I’d read the treasurer’s speech to see what story they’re trying to tell Australians about the economic year ahead, and what their priorities are. Then, it’s on to budget paper No.2, which outlines more details about the key measures announced by the government in terms of where they are spending and saving money in major departments.
Early on, I’d read the glossies first, but while these sometimes contain some useful extra information such as case studies – this tax cut will leave John Smith $1400 per year better off – they tend to put a positive government spin on things. I now often leave them to last.
It’s a multimedia affair in lock-up. Months of technical work goes into working out how to do charts and graphics and illustrations and videos in a hermetically sealed environment. Our journalists step out from their interrogation of the numbers to record podcasts and film videos. Online interactives are built without access to online. Every camera and computer used is examined by treasury to make sure we cannot communicate with the world outside until they say so.
By about 3pm, smokers and vapers are beginning to look at the emergency exit stair wells and bathroom smoke alarms, and the trolleys of tiny sandwiches and pies, coke zeroes and snakes have arrived. Sometimes, there’s sushi.
More importantly, senior editors and journalists are ready to have a phone hook up with head office to talk through what they believe the thrust of budget coverage should be – and what should be top of the website that night and on the front page the next day.
Has the government kept its promises? Has it abandoned any plans it had foreshadowed? Are their any surprises in there that haven’t been flagged ahead of time? And, most importantly, is this budget in the national interest?
Then it’s on to the treasurer and finance minister’s packed joint press conference, usually around 3.30pm and held in another committee room, in which journalists fire their first salvos and probe the two senior economic ministers about the document they’re about to release.
Almost inevitably, you have to sit through a PowerPoint slideshow before getting to the good bit, which is asking impertinent questions.
After that press conference, journalists rush back to their offices to update their stories.
But the politicians are not quite done with us.
The walk and talk
By about 4.30pm, the treasurer, finance minister and often the prime minister take a stroll through the press gallery to answer questions, put on the charm and try to glean what is going to end up on tomorrow’s front page. Anthony Albanese, Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher always take a stroll down the red-carpeted corridor on level two, and Treasury secretaries tend to do the same (and make a beeline for Shane Wright).
I can still remember the smiles on the faces of Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan as they walked through the main committee room in 2008, proud of delivering the first Labor budget after more than a decade, even as economic storm clouds gathered. Likewise, the grins of Abbott and Hockey in 2014 as they confided to senior editors from a rival publication about a document they believed would have a major impact on the state of federal finances.
Impact alright, just not the one they expected.
By 4.30pm onwards, people are filing their assigned stories and if they aren’t, editors are hassling them because those stories need to be produced and those figures need to be checked well before the embargo lifts.
Months of planning goes into this moment: almost everyone knows what they’ll be writing before they head into the budget, whether it be a piece of analysis, the trunk, a story in one of their rounds (specialisations) such as Defence, NDIS, climate change or something else.
A couple of journalists will enter the lockup knowing not much is likely to change in their round, so they’ll be writing one of our most popular stories – the two-minute budget, winners and losers or what this budget means for you.
They’re also on standby in case a story we didn’t expect is spotted in the budget papers during the six-hour lock-up.
And we’re done
At around 7.30pm, the treasurer rises to their feet and the speech begins, and we can turn our phones back on to arrange catch-ups with colleagues and hear from the babysitter about what atrocities have been committed by our children while we’ve been sealed off from the electric world.
Later that night, in bars in the Canberra suburbs of Kingston, Manuka and Barton, after-office dinners have concluded, journos will show their rivals a PDF of tomorrow’s front page and fret about a story they might have missed.
What will be in the budget?
- Tax: Chalmers’ budget tax cuts on one-year delay
- The war: Inflation to hit 5 per cent as oil price bites – and it could get even worse
- Opinion: Following the Farrer earthquake, there’s a bigger political event to come
- Housing: Chalmers doubles down with $2 billion for roads and pipes
- NDIS: This overhaul is the biggest government cut this century. It had better work
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.
James Massolais chief political commentator. He was previously national affairs editor and South-East Asia correspondent. He has won Quill and Kennedy awards and been a Walkley finalist. Connect securely on Signal @jamesmassola.01Connect viaXoremail.
