The parliament will sit at 12 today. There will be a question time as usual and all the rest of the bits and bobs that go with a parliamentary day. The lock up begins around 1ish where journalists are locked in with the budget documents and a treasury official who has taken their phones and makes sure there is no sneaky internet access (shout out to the news organisations IT departments who have had to create intranet systems just for today to link bureaus with their newsrooms so things can still get subbed and produced and what not without breaking the no internet rules) and then once the Treasurer gets to his feet on the floor of the parliament (around 7ish) then the budget coverage goes live.

The lock up is an old tradition that was introduced by the Chiefley government in the 1940s so journalists working for the morning papers could have the info in advance. Then it became about ‘market sensitivity’ with governments not wanting to announce the budget until after the markets closed. But in this era, all of that is outdated. Most of the budget figures are known (or at least approximated) ahead of time, because analysts have their own models which can predict what Treasury is going to say. And the markets are 24 hours now, so there is no impact on that.

The lock up is one of the only ways the government can preserve its ability to control the narrative, at least for a very short period of time. So it is completely outdated and serves no purpose any longer – other than to give the government of the day control over how the information comes out. So no one is going to give that up.