00:22Hello and welcome to budget lockup for 2026. We've just been delivered our USBs and our
00:28hard copies of the budget papers to start getting into it. We've now got about six hours to work
00:34through them before the treasurer stands to his feet this afternoon. First thing we start with is
00:39the embargoed budget speech which gives us a good overview of what the government's hoping that
00:43people will kind of see as the top things in this budget. We've got the women's budget statement
00:48review and then all of our papers. Okay the team's all working in here we're going to head down the
00:57hallway to get some of the additional papers that we can use for reporting. Here's all the portfolio
01:07budget statements that we can use for today. So we've got treasury, defense, prime minister and
01:14cabinet. There's heaps and these all give us additional information and context for our reporting.
01:50I am the digital editor for CT so I am preparing our social media posts, our plans for where we're
01:58going to put the stories on the home page, getting ready to communicate with our producers off-site
02:03when we are out of lockup. Hello I'm the deputy editor of the Canberra Times and my job is to
02:10make
02:10sure that everybody files on time. So at the moment we're just looking at the stories that we have on
02:15the page and working out what our priorities are, what are the most interesting parts of the budget,
02:20making a few last-minute changes and then when the lights come back on and the wi-fi returns at
02:257 30,
02:26get to send it all out to our colleagues outside. I'm looking for savings in the budget apart from the
02:32huge NDIS drop so climate department yeah they're carrying a bit of the load more than we thought.
02:39I'm looking at what's in the budget for the ACT so it's about four o'clock so I'm getting a
02:44bit of
02:44a clearer picture after rifling through budget papers one two and three and just getting a piece
02:50together to file for five o'clock which is one hour away. And what have you found so far? So
02:56there's
02:56very little in terms of new big funding for the ACT, most of what I'm seeing is 30 million dollars
03:02for
03:03a new RSPCA animal welfare centre, 50 million dollars in road upgrades, a little bit of funding
03:10for health. I am filing on housing mostly on negative gearing and capital gains but there's
03:16also some more money in there for housing for first home buyers and they're continuing the ban on
03:23foreign investors. Very importantly though we're eating some snakes. This is our office here and you can see
03:31behind me a big line of journos. They're all waiting with a ticket number to chat to Treasury officials
03:36who can give us some context on stuff that we might not understand in the budget. Very helpful.
03:42Well as you can see Finance Minister Katie Geller has been and gone. Some of my colleagues have been to
03:48the Blue Room press conference and we're just finishing off our final stories. It's 5 30 so we've got
03:54about two hours until the Treasurer stands up in the House of Reps. There's a fair bit to do before
03:59then in terms of polishing stories off, getting photos in, making sure that it can all get to
04:04print and online on time. So it's gotten pretty quiet in the press gallery now. People are kind of
04:09finished asking their questions of Treasury officials and discussing things and it's really just writing
04:14time. Well the Treasurer is now very close to standing up which means that we are almost finished
04:20filing. We'll leave you here in a minute. This has been a really interesting budget. Broadly there's
04:24been a lot of emphasis on changes to tax particularly pertaining to property. You can read a lot more
04:30about that on our website but I'm Lucinda Garbutt-Young and we hope you've enjoyed coming behind the scenes
04:35of Lock Up With Us.
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