Dialogue: Bring back Ruth - or even Nordy

By TOM FREWEN

There has to be a better way of delivering the Budget.

Not delivering it at all. That has to be an option. Don't call us, Dr Cullen, we'll call you.

"Budget Helpline. You're speaking with Michael."

"Is there anything in the Budget for me?"

"No."

"Are there any new taxes in the Budget?"

"No."

"Are there any surprises in the Budget?"

"No."

He did say there would be no surprises. Trouble is, "No surprises in Budget" doth not a headline make. And there has to be a headline or all the columns of words and graphs and tables and comment will look even more boring than they are.

And there's only one picture, sadly. And that's the one of the minister reading the Financial Statement in the House, the single most boring event in the parliamentary year - one person reading aloud for up to an hour without interruption.

No points of order. No interjections, witty or witless. No sheep jokes. Just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Its closest rival is the Speech from the Throne, which is slightly more interesting because it's in fancy dress. And remember we're talking about a place where boredom is relieved only by occasional bursts of tedium.

Yet the media love it.

Public radio broadcasts the Budget speech live on two national frequencies.

Commercial radio breaks out in news flashes. Still no surprises in Budget. This news flash brought you by Sharkey's Sausage Wharehouse where everybody gets a banger.

As for TVNZ, goodbye Days of Our Lives, hello Yes, Minister. More recently, of course, Yes, Minister has been renamed "Anything we can do for you, Minister?" or "Please don't split us up, Minister" or "If you let us keep BCL, Minister, we'll put you on every night instead of Telebingo."

Question Time, which is infinitely better television, winds up on a Sky digital channel watched by half a peoplemeter and a cat, albeit a slightly larger audience than the one still in front of the box after just 10 minutes of the Budget Special on TV One.

There hasn't been a Budget worth televising since 1991, when Ruth Richardson, dressed as a canary, performed the political equivalent of the shower scene in Psycho.

She was followed by six years of Bill Birch doing his famous impression of a man with a bad head cold reading a car manual in a decompression chamber.

Dr Cullen is a better reader. Unlike his predecessor, he seems to have some grip on the content and its meaning.

Clearly the brightest boy in his form, he looks like Harry Potter sen.

No matter how hard he tries to make it entertaining, it's going to look, as it always does, like a contest in which one person tries to send as many others to sleep in the shortest possible time, giving up on the point of winning and sitting down just as everybody wakes up and starts shouting at him.

TVNZ's reluctance to treat the Budget like the rest of the news is a mystery.

Why not leave it to Holmes?

Do the Budget through its victims.

All the trees, for instance, that gave their lives for the paper it's printed on. Track down their forest and interview the remaining trees. How do they feel about the loss of their loved ones? Gutted.

Get Hosking to ask his Rolf Harris question. "The Budget, minister. Paint me a picture."

Seriously, though, one explanation for the media's love affair with the Budget is a nostalgic yearning for the days when the Government made all the important decisions and did it on the one night.

The need to have all the price increases take effect on the stroke of midnight provided the excitement, suspense, surprise and things to talk about that are missing today.

There is a better way of delivering the Budget. But it means we would have to bring back Nordy.

www.nzherald.co.nz/budget

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