Budget 2024: Suspiciously “woke” lunch served at Budget lockup

Thursday, 30 May 2024

Andrea Vance and Luke Malpass share their thoughts on Budget 2024

Kevin Norquay is a senior writer for The Post.

OPINION: Buried under a tsunami of Treasury documents, Budget Day was proving an odd mix of baffling and boring, until I was singled out as a security risk.

Held in the Beehive’s Banquet Hall, the Budget lockup of journalists until 2pm -secret documents, overseen by wall-to-wall Treasury officials, is in no way banquety - there is scant feasting, no drinking, no dancing.

Lockup even comes with a menacing warning: “no information (including but not limited to text, voice, images or data) may be transmitted, received or released in any manner”. Got it.

Rows of journalists sit at desks, which twist around the circular walls like wagon wheel spokes. Journos locked up for more than three hours, unable to broadcast or publish … that’s likely close to heaven for many.

For the first two hours the day’s most-valuble-player, Finance Minister Nicola Willis, isn’t even there, with lunch further off.

Rows and rows of locked up journalists in the Beehive

At 10.36am staffers hand out the documents, with Budget Economic and Fiscal Update 2024 the star of the papery show.

Sentence one in 157 stats-heavy pages is “economic conditions are expected to remain subdued in the near term as the economy continues to rebalance from a period of strong demand, tight supply and historically high inflation”. God save me.

With the will to live in balance, the tax cut calculator is sought out. Not much finding required; it’s atop the Budget website - the calculator first, then links to the Budget document, fiscal strategy, Budget forecasts and estimates.

Whoever set this website up knows voter priorities.

An economic vision is all very well, but where were the lamingtons?

So for this scribbler, $80.19 a fortnight, $5.72 a day, 23 cents an hour. Or, daily, one flat white, one 330ml craft beer, about a litre of milk, or a frozen supermarket pie. Not bad, even if potentially fattening. I start to daydream, as if I’ve won Lotto.

A Treasury official ruins the mood, by leaning over my shoulder, peering at my unfolding masterpiece. “Are you online?” she asks, reeking of suspicion, as my colleagues crack up.

Somehow, out of more than 200 journalists and economists, she has managed to select the one least likely to be able to connect to the internet.

Finance minister Nicola Willis arrives at the lockup with David Seymour, Chris Bishop, Shane Jones, and Dr Caralee McLiesh from Treasury.

“No,” I say, dumped in a wave of anxiety. It would be just like me to have inadvertently managed to connect to the outside world by trying not to. “Look,” I say, sweating and waving my iPhone, pointing out Airplane Mode is on. She leaves.

Back to the paper mountain - if it were next year the pay for reading them would be 80 cents more. Bitter.

At noon, Willis sweeps in clad in National Party blue, flanked by finance hench-ministers David Seymour, Chris Bishop and Shane Jones, a gang more scary than a suspicious Treasury official.

Willis is armed with graphs, smiles, soothing words about how it’s all under control, and sharp retorts along the lines of “I completely reject that assertion”, for those who question her numbers, or commitment to Māori or Pasifika.

As well, she lavishes as many thanks on Seymour as someone clutching a gold statuette might apply to their entire team at an Oscar ceremony. And then she is gone, “enjoy reading the documents”.

Lunch is announced. Quietly fearing it will be the crisps, muesli bar, baked bean government proposal for school lunches, it turns out not to be, but suspiciously woke - there are vegan, vegetarian and gluten free options, and sushi. Surely this is not Government policy?

Worse, there are no lamingtons, only sausage rolls to bring things back to New Zealand of the 1980s. The Post claims the last three of those, with a glance to ensure no official is watching.