Making and reporting on the Federal Budget with former Managing Director of Nine Publishing James Chessell

With Treasurer Jim Chalmers set to hand down the Federal Budget
next week, we thought it would be a good time to dive into the
process of how it gets made and how the media reports on it. James
Chessell, a Walkley Award-winning journalist and former Managing
Director of Publishing at Nine Entertainment, is well-versed in
covering budgets. Plus, his former time working as a staffer for
Joe Hockey makes him uniquely qualified on the topic.  Club
Picks: This episode of Politics with Michelle Grattan with
economist Chris Richardson. She’s the doyen of political coverage
out of Canberra’s Press Gallery, and he’s the go-to guru for anyone
looking to make sense of the Budget. Ahead of its release, they set
the scene for what’s on the government’s economic plate.  This
piece from 2017 by Dr Denis Muller, a journalism expert from
Melbourne Uni, goes into the art of the leak…  And speaking of
leaks, the mother of them all came about in 1980 when then-Ten News
political reporter Laurie Oakes got access to the Budget in a dark
Canberra car park 2 days ahead of its release… This clip of how it
unfolded on air is fun, if only for then Treasurer John Howard’s
reaction…