Budget Night
The Federal Treasurer presents the budget on budget night, which since 1994 has been the second Tuesday in May. In modern times, the budget has always been broadcast live from Parliament House on the ABC and Sky News Australia. It is hosted on the ABC, without interruption from 7:30 pm to 8 pm, normally followed up with a report by a panel assessing the changes, benefits and flaws in the budget.
Before the presentation of the budget, the day is spent behind locked doors briefing media and interest groups on various aspects of the budget. This is known as the budget lock-up. Those invited to attend the briefings are not allowed access to the outside world until the Budget has been presented by the federal treasurer.
A convention in Australian politics is that the leader of the opposition delivers a "right of reply" speech in Parliament, which is also broadcast on television.
Read more about this topic: Australian Federal Budget
Famous quotes containing the words budget and/or night:
“We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness
and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror
and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing
and the night cold and the night long and the river
to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning
and blackness ahead”
—Robert Earl Hayden (1913–1980)