I’m going to have a go at it. I’ll leave comments closed on this post until 7pm-ish. Until then, comments can be left on Rob’s speculation thread. Once the liveblogging starts, remember to refresh periodically to see the updates, and please leave your own updates in comments.
A thought to start off with - the lack of a “budget bounce” for the Coalition in recent years led to (accurate, I think) commentary that the importance of the budget as a political event had been massively overplayed. This year, everyone knows the tax cuts are coming, and it’s a much more complex messaging/communications event - as Bernard Keane captures in this piece at Crikey, noting that the leaks have been finely targeted to particular publications covering particular demographics (for instance, “soak the rich” going to the tabloids, climate change for the Sunday Fairfax papers):
Crikey and others have been lamenting the Government’s mixed Budget messages, but we were missing the point. The messages were only mixed for the commentariat itself, which analyses everything the Government says. The media diet of most people is far more limited, and they would’ve only heard what the Government targeted at them.
Similarly, speculation that the budget will establish or damage the Rudd government’s “economic management” credentials is another elite preoccupation. As demonstrated by Kim in this post, that famous phrase is a piece of bad polling anyway - literally asking the wrong question, with endless narratives built on something that has nothing to do with how people vote. It’s much more likely that people are awaiting evidence that Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan will do their utmost to protect them from economic uncertainty, than that there’ll be some sort of collective scoring exercise on what is increasingly a very niche piece of political theatre. The Opposition probably know this as well - though they’re caught in the headlights having set Brendan Nelson up as a bunny who’ll need to perform or face the consequences. They should be much more worried about the polling that demonstrates that “welfare for all, not just the poor” is going down like a lead balloon even among their own voters.
Elsewhere: Riffing off Kim riffing off Zoe’s crystal ball liveblogging, tigtog proposes a budget drinking game. Demonstrating the odd time sense that surrounds budget night, Zoe reports on reports of struggling working families with babies earning more than $150000 already bemoaning how they’ll find it hard to make do without the nanny state. And Trevor Cook deconstructs some of the spin about the budget that’s been going on for quite some time already.
