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The budget circus and democracy: federal budget processes are increasingly kept from public scrutiny. Boris Frankel takes a closer look.

Article Excerpt
For many years after the presentation of the annual federal budget, I would run a class where students were asked to bring in copies of any newspaper reports or other material on the budget. The aim of the class was not to criticise particular budgets but rather to teach students how to decode budget papers and media budget supplements. Simple but profound questions such as how to tell whether the government was spending more or less on particular items nearly always evoked interest from students who were otherwise bored with economics and bemused by the language of budget-speak. No question was regarded as silly and no prior knowledge about budgets assumed. Unfortunately, this is not how our media and government operate.

With few exceptions, the media have once again done their best to ensure that Australians are kept in the dark about the historical background and future implications of the recent federal budget. One should not confuse the media's reporting of the budget's main spending and revenue with more in-depth analysis of what the budget tells us about government public policy. Unsurprisingly, the media focussed on whether the budget would give Howard a bounce in the polls or whether Costello's master class on budget tactics was a 'clever' exercise in electoral cynicism rather than responsible administration. Certainly, there was comment about the neglect of measures dealing with climate change and other issues. But apart from the substantial criticisms made by the Greens, Australian Democrats and various community organisations (largely ignored or downplayed by the media), the budget was soon forgotten as the media returned to more pressing issues like misbehaving footballers.

In theory, budgets are claimed to be the essence of parliamentary democracy. Classical slogans such as 'no taxation without representation' are supposed to differentiate an active citizenry from passive subjects treated with contempt by secretive and authoritarian rulers. Not so in Australia. Here the majority of the media--in the name of free speech--actively or unwittingly collude with federal and state governments to keep citizens largely in the dark about the vital aspects of government policy. Every year, journalists meekly agree to be locked up by the government before the Treasurer's speech and then asked, not only to digest hundreds of pages, but also reduce complex departmental budgets and macro-economic policy to a few column inches or brief electronic media sound bites. Despite the valiant efforts of some journalists to present a more informative account to readers and listeners, it is no surprise that much of what the government deliberately buries, glosses over or disguises in the budget papers remains unanalysed.

Following the Treasurer's speech we are then subjected to the farcical ritual of TV and radio analyses where Treasurer and Shadow Treasurer and the same handful of familiar peak organisation spokespersons and mainstream business analysts--with their predictable positions--praise or condemn the budget for the next 24 to 48 hours. No media outlet in Australia devotes ongoing space and energy (for example, a page or two, or a longish TV or radio segment over several weeks) to detailed analyses, department by department, that carefully explains to audiences the main programmatic impacts of the budget. Instead, affected community sector, business, union, environment, aid and other organisations scrutinise the relevant parts of the budget and hope that some of...

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