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Monday, 11 May 2009

One sleep til Budget!

by Bernard Keane

Bernard Keane has a look around the Press Gallery on the eve of the Budget. WARNING: may induce motion sickness

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8 Comments

  1. Stilgherrian
    Posted Monday, 11 May 2009 at 11:27 am | Permalink

    Boxes. Wooden boxes for media releases. And you say, Bernard, that NGOs and lobbyists will queue up there to get printed copies of the Budget papers? WTF?

    The Budget papers are all put online at budget.gov.au just as the Treasurer starts his speech. You can download them as PDFs, search for things that interest you and save a truckload of paper.

  2. Chris Johnson
    Posted Monday, 11 May 2009 at 12:31 pm | Permalink

    Now the Stemetil has kicked in - the tour was much more fun than any old school excursion. Geez the electronic media are slobs dumping equipment in corridors for everyone to trip over - where’s WH&S? Noticeble are the used food trays outside Fairfax with machines full of junk food for everyone else. If you’re really concerned about the vibes from Alan Ramsay’s desk just run the soundrack from Edward Scissorhands occasionally to exorcise the demons.
    PS Stil, if you’re sitting in the Great Hall dining on a $2000 egg sandwhich wouldn’t you rather duck upstairs for the instant printed version of the Budget? MP’s who can’t use PC’s do.

  3. dan cass
    Posted Monday, 11 May 2009 at 1:15 pm | Permalink

    Stilgherrian I love your techno-optimism. Have you checked any of the various sites that have been set up to ensure that the torrent of downloading does not fail us citizens on budget night?

    Check out the one at Parliament House itself…. http://twitpic.com/4yn04

    I will bring my # Huawei mobile router thingy to Parliament but reckon I’ll probably also try to nab the dead tree version too.

  4. Jeff Waugh
    Posted Monday, 11 May 2009 at 1:25 pm | Permalink

    Dan, oddly you mention as an adjective the kind of technology that is probably most likely to achieve that kind stability: (Bit)torrent. :-)

    By distributing large documents such as this with a peer-to-peer file-sharing platform, every hungry downloader will in fact be assisting every other hungry downloader.

  5. Grant Butler
    Posted Monday, 11 May 2009 at 6:36 pm | Permalink

    Nice to see you’ve upgraded the office furniture Bernard

  6. Kerrie Gandara
    Posted Monday, 11 May 2009 at 7:56 pm | Permalink

    Amazing cinematography.

  7. Michael Harvey
    Posted Monday, 11 May 2009 at 8:39 pm | Permalink

    Loved the close up of Jack Nicholson at the end. Next time wear budget smugglers.

  8. Stilgherrian
    Posted Monday, 11 May 2009 at 8:49 pm | Permalink

    Somehow last year I managed to download the Budget papers in time to write something on the Wednesday morning. Let’s see how we go — ‘cos I’m in Sydney, not Canberra.