For my sins this afternoon’s Budget lock-up in Parliament House will be my 55th. Artie Fadden was Treasurer at my first lock-up.

On the afternoon of Budget day, starting at 1.30pm, journalists go into the lock up – rooms normally provided for parliamentary committees. They are given all the Budget documents and can’t leave till 7.30pm when the Treasurer begins his Budget speech in the House.

Even then there is a curb — radio and TV cannot broadcast what’s in the Budget till the Treasurer gets to that point in his speech. Once the speech is over it’s open slather.

The Budget is more for the benefit of the Government than the media. Treasurer Paul Keating hit on the clever idea of holding a press conference in the lock up to explain to the journalists just how wonderful he was. Treasurer Costello has willingly maintained this procedure.

The lock-ups originated when Ben Chifley was Treasurer. His practice was to go into Parliament at 8pm and make his Budget speech. Journalists were then in a mad rush to get their reports off to the morning papers. Chifley was prevailed upon to have an early embargoed release, now called a lock-up. The Budget was kept under strict wraps to prevent any journalist benefiting, hence the lock-up would last until the Australian stock exchanges closed.

This is now pointless since there are stock exchanges all over the world where one can buy or sell at any hour of the day or night. John Kerin, Hawke’s Treasurer for only six months after the first unsuccessful Keating challenge to Hawke, realised lock-ups were not necessary. He brought down the 1991 Budget and delivered it at 2pm in the afternoon of Budget day.

Kerin originally told the press gallery there would be no lock-up but was prevailed upon by the radio news services to give them a one hour embargo on his speech before he rose in the House.

The other feature of Budgets under Peter Costello is that it’s extremely difficult to discover just what the Government is proposing to spend on what items. For example neither this Budget nor the last give any information on what government advertising campaigns will be funded by the taxpayers in the lead up to the election.

For the convenience of the morning papers, Budget locks were also held for some years in Sydney and Melbourne. But these lock-ups were stopped by Treasury, no doubt so that all journalists could go to the Treasurer’s propaganda press conference in the Canberra lock-up.

There are two additional lock-ups in Canberra: one for the political parties (at which Labor is entitled to have 22 representatives) and another lock-up for the peak national business bodies such as the Australian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Australian Industry Group.

Just why the media devotes such attention to the Budget is a mystery. All Budgets sink without a stone within a week and none have ever led to dancing in the streets. The public by and large believe them unutterably boring.

Rob Chalmers is the longest serving member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, is a former President of the National Press Club, and with Jenny Hutchison wrote the book ‘Inside Canberra’. He is now the editor of online newsletter Inside Canberra.