Revealed: What goes on inside the Budget lock-up?

RIGHT now hundreds of journalists are under lock and key trying to understand the Federal Budget. Once they’re in they can’t go out. So what happens in there?

RIGHT now hundreds of journalists — yes, there are still hundreds — are attempting to understand the Federal Budget while locked in several rooms inside Parliament House in Canberra.

The lock-up used to be justified on the basis its contents could move currency and bond markets. But that’s no longer its main purpose.

These days it’s about trying to get the most favourable coverage. And in this journalist’s experience — I’ve reported on about a dozen budgets — both sides of politics spin just as hard as the other.

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The Budget lock-up has been likened to the HSC for journalists. The six-hour exam starts at 1.30pm. You can bring notes. You can bring a laptop. But you can’t communicate with the outside world — you have to sign a form beforehand saying you won’t.

The punishment, under the Crimes Act, is up to two years’ jail.

Once inside the lockup each journalist is handed a bag containing hard and soft copy versions of Budget papers one through four, plus the Treasurer’s speech and the Budget Overview document.

These alone are heavy enough to cause injury.

But there’s more — table after table of documents from each ministry. Journalists collect those relevant to their area of coverage.

Rooms are allotted to different media organisations. In each are banks of computers brought in by each organisation.

Hard at work ... Federal treasurer Joe Hockey (L) works on his budget papers with finance minister Mathias Cormann at Parliament House. Pic: AFP PHOTO

Journalists find their desks and start reading. Quickly, the noise builds as reporters discover what’s in — and not in — the documents.

Within 90 minutes, news teams will be found huddling in discussion. The goal of these meetings is to determine the theme of the coverage and the best angles.

The Treasurer will wander through the rooms and stop to talk with key commentators and editors. TV cameras and radio journalists follow.

The commentators and editors will have read the Treasurer’s speech and perused much of the other material by this stage. The Treasurer will again attempt to put his key message across.

It doesn’t always work. In 2006, then Treasurer Peter Costello thought he was on a winner with billions of dollars of tax cuts.

But Mr Costello wasn’t budgeting on what was happening in another — the one in Beaconsfield, Tasmania.

Miners Brant Webb and Todd Russell were being freed from two weeks trapped about 1km below the surface.

But Mr Costello did not seem to know this when he inquired of one editor what he thought of the Budget.

“Looks like a particularly solid page 16, Treasurer,” the editor quipped.

The pressure builds as deadline approaches. Reporters are expected to file before 6pm. Some don’t. Instead, they crack.

At 7.30pm the bells ring, the doors open and the Treasurer moves to the Despatch Box in the House of Representatives: “Speaker, I move that the Bill now be read a second time.”

And away we go again.

Originally published as Revealed: What goes on inside the Budget lock-up?