It was certainly a fascinating experience that gave me some really interesting insights into the Australian political process and the nature of the Parliamentary press gallery. Flying into Canberra on a 7.20 Qantas flight, I sat in a planeful of Budget travellers – journalists, lobbyists, bureaucrats and businesspeople in suits. I recognised Steven Long, the ABC’s economics correspondent, who later asked the most telling question in Wayne Swan’s press conference.

 Disgorged from thhe plane, this sombre-clad cargo then made straight for a unique taxi queue equipped with flatscreens, where Sky News kept people up to date with the latest budget leaks while they waited, seemingly interminably, for a cab. Meanwhile I joined a few scruffy backpackers and one pensioner waiting for Canberra Airport’s only concession to public transport, a half-hourly bus. If you needed a simple explanation of the shape of class distinction in this country, here it was. Still, for a $9 ride to the city, I was only too happy to get on. 

Canberra, for those who haven’t been there (and I hadn’t since a sight-seeing trip to the War Memorial with my parents in the 1980s), is a city entirely planned around the car. Seemingly devoid of street life, the city is instead a series of tidy clover-leaves which house overly neat office buildings surrounded by acres of carparks (and the occasional child-care centre). The ADF complex at Russell also features a rather ridiculous Imperial eagle on a self-important column, the better to assert whatever military dominance the ADF might project down the hill towards Lake Burley-Griffin. The people of Canberra, of course, live elsewhere, away in the suburbs of Tuggeranong and the like, most of them in fact in the state of NSW.

 Finding myself a cafe in the wind-swept Canberra CBD, I ordered a coffee and worked on my laptop until the time came to travel to Parliament House. Catching a bus to Parliament House is an interesting experience in itself – you roll through the national capital precinct past the High Court,  National Library and National Gallery before I alighted out the front of the Prime Minister and Cabinet building. From here it was another lonely walk up the hill to the entrance of Parliament House, while big white Comcars containing white-haired men in dark suits whizzed past.

I’m not the first person to remark on the abject lack of human scale to this pompous po-mo tribute to Versailles, but walking up the hill brings home the experience in a very personal way. At noon, as I trudged across the desolate forecourt towards the entrance, there was not a single other person on the vast piazza and one almost expected the proverbial tumbleweeds to blow by. I realised that almost no-one actually enters Parliament House by the front door.Inside Parliament House, of course, it was rather busier. As I wandered up the stairs to the lock-up, I could already see the hyper-kinectic little clusters of gossip that are so often a hallmark of any gathering of journalists.

Signing in early, I took a seat near the door of the lockup and watched the media arrive. It’s interesting, for example, how the News Limited types keep to themselves. Paul Kelly, Michael Stutchberry, Lenore Taylor and Robert Gottleibson stood in a tight-knit little circle talking to themselves, while the Fairfax types flitted about the increasingly crowded lock-up in pairs. I had time to introduce  myself to the journalist next to me, a lovely fellow from the Newcastle Herald, before the doors opened and a rolling maul formed at the table contained the budget papers.

From there it was off to the little committee room I had been assigned. While AAP had a big bank of computers already set up, and Fairfax had sandwiches brought in at regular intervals, at New Matilda’s Canberra bureau we had a desk and a powerpoint for my laptop – which only goes to show that however much technology advances, the essence of journalism is still relatively simple.  Mind you, I did very much appreciate the PDF version of the budget papers being provided.From there a couple of hours flew by as I grappled with the four printed books of the formal Budget Papers, the glossy Infrastructure brochure, another big glossy report on Pension Reform, the myriad of press releases and of course the Portfolio Budget Statements themselves (except for Defence, which to the chagrin of the journos from the Australian Defence Business Review, had not managed to get its Portfolio Budget Statement ready in time).

I had barely looked up from my screen when a fresh-faced young Treasury officer popped her head in and informed us that Wayne Swan’s press conference was about to start.So up I ambled to the “presso” to see Wayne swan present to the gallery. He looked nervous early and didn’t speak well, but warmed up as he went along. As Bernard Keane has remarked, the questioning was fairly tame although Stephen Long did try to pin him down on the very optimistic Treasury growth forecasts, which say Australia will return to 4.5% growth in only a couple of years.

The conference  itself was quite an interesting thing in terms of media watching; it’s interesting who watches impassively (more than you expect), who exchanges earnest whispers with colleagues (Lenore Taylor), who takes notes (Kerry O’Brien) and who just wanders in and out looking well-tailored (Tony Jones).

By the time I got out of the press conference, it was time to start writing my articles. Suddenly it was only a short two hours before I had to file my reports and so then it was the usual touch-typing sprint to formulate and arrange my paragraphs. Before I knew it I could hear ABC types doing piece-to-cameras outside my committee room, and then it was 7.30, the division bells were ringing and I was rushing to the desk to retrieve my mobile phone.

The post-budget media antics are in a way even more interesting. I walked upstairs to the offices of the press gallery, where a vast ruck of journalists, lobbyists, spokespeople and politicians swirled and jostled in a narrow corridor as Heather Ridout, Don Henry, Joe Hockey and seeminggly eveyr other lobbyist in the country took turns to do their 30second grabs in response. Meanwhile, Guy Rundle was running around randomly insulting people about their suits.

From there, it was off the Holy Grail Hotel, but you can read all about from Guy Rundle himself.