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Expert budget commentary from our most experienced commentators – and from our youngest
By Liam Phelan
This week marked the second coming of one of Canberra’s most important, and most tightly controlled, pieces of political theatre: the federal budget. It’s an event that can make – or break – governments, and within its thousands of dry pages lie the wellbeing and prospective prosperity or poverty of more than 25 million Australians.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers was the man to deliver the national accounts for the Albanese government on Tuesday, Labor’s first budget in nine years.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers presents the Albanese government’s first budget.Credit: AFR
Although Chalmers started his speech to Parliament at 7.30pm precisely, by then our journalists had already been scrutinising the four separate books of budget papers for hours.
Journalists from all major Australian media enter a “lockup” each year. In the Herald’s case this happens both in Parliament House, where our Canberra team is based, and in our Nine office in North Sydney. We have to hand in our phones, sign confidentiality agreements and for several hours we have no connection with the outside world. In exchange, we get advance copies of confidential financial information so we can prepare our news, analysis and insights for your consumption both online and in print.
At 7.30pm on the dot, a raft of stories were published online: a “trunk” news story, analysis from our financial experts, the five-minute budget, a wrap of winners and losers, and lots more.
Herald subscribers frequently cite our coverage of such events as one of the reasons to support us. We rely on seasoned veterans such as economics editor Ross Gittins, who, incredibly, was covering his 49th budget, and political editor Peter Hartcher, who has “only” done about 25, to analyse a huge amount of data at warp speed and quickly draw some perspicacious conclusions.
Gittins coined the instantly memorable line that this was a Buy Now, Pay Later “solid and sensible” affair.
Meanwhile, Hartcher riffed on the treasurer’s doctor title, saying he had observed the sacred obligation under the Hippocratic oath – do no harm.
So there’s the first takes from two of our most experienced, and most respected, commentators. For the full line-up of our Herald coverage, and I have to say, it’s pretty comprehensive, you can read this great summary here from national editor David King.
But before I move on, let me just single out someone at the other end of the career scale, trainee Millie Muroi.
Muroi is coming towards the end of her one-year traineeship and responded with glee to a request by federal bureau chief Michelle Griffin for someone to make the trip down to Canberra to help.
While normally it’s our more experienced reporters and production staff who get sent into lock up, this was a great chance for someone younger to experience the occasion. While journalistically green, Muroi comes well-credentialed, with an economics degree and 10 months’ experience working as a graduate economist.
As well as helping to compile one of our best-read stories online, the five-minute budget, Millie also did a bespoke video and Tiktok on how the budget affects Generation Z. This is part of our effort to reach younger media consumers and Muroi excelled in taking what is a dry subject but making it compelling and relevant.
It’s been a busy week, as just before the budget the Herald published the result of almost 12 months of research by our chief investigative reporter, Kate McClymont.
Her investigation revealed the devastating impact on families of ultimately futile procedures conducted by renowned brain surgeon Charlie Teo. If you haven’t read this article I urge you do so – you will be shocked by some of the terrible outcomes experienced by Teo’s patients.
McClymont will follow up this investigation with another article tomorrow about the litany of claims Teo has made this week when given soft interviews by many of his admirers.
I also need to mention the other extraordinary event of the week, the Bruce Lehrmann trial, which ended disastrously on Thursday when Chief Justice Lucy McCallum discharged the jury and aborted the trial.
The lawyer for Lehrmann has referred Higgins to the court and police after she criticised the criminal justice system on live television following the extraordinary outcome of the case.
If you want an intelligent and insightful understanding of this complex and sad event, please read this piece by columnist Jacqueline Maley, who we sent to Canberra to provide analysis for this trial alongside her Canberra colleague Angus Thompson. Maley’s weekly column in The Sun-Herald is usually one of the best reads of the week, and her writing about this trial demonstrates why she is a Walkley Award finalist this year. It’s also worth signing up to Maley’s weekly Inside Politics newsletter to get her unique take on what’s happening in politics delivered to your inbox each Friday.
Bevan Shields sends a newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive his Note from the Editor.