This week was Budget week at Parliament, a feast of documents, papers, numbers and cheese rolls.
Like so much that happens at Parliament, Budget Day is an event soaked in tradition, a piece of theatre for which there's great hunger among political commentators and the like.
Rather than offer yet another analysis of the Budget's contents, The House offers a different kind of wrap to get your teeth into:
Finance Minister Grant Robertson (centre) and Deputy Finance Minister Megan Woods (behind him with red box) hand over copies of the Budget 2023 to leaders of other parties, 18 May 2023. Photo: Johnny Blades / VNP
At the start of the week, we sat down with the man at the centre of all the fuss, Finance Minister Grant Robertson, to talk about the ceremonial nature of Budget Day, how it is padded out by a set of traditions including lock-ups, haircuts amd a snack ritual.
There was also an exposition on the way political party leaders must shape their Budget Day speech without really knowing what is in the big document. There are a variety of approaches and this year’s party leaders employed most of them.
It's the norm following the delivery of the Budget for the House to go into urgency, a chance for the government to move through legislation directly related to the Budget and some other stuff too. So we provided a summary of what bills were progressed during urgency.
Not everything has been about the Budget. Other interesting stuff has been going on recently, including what may be one of the final members bills to be picked from the ballot for consideration in the 53rd Parliament. The MP behind it revealed how at this point in the process a member's bill remains a rough diamond waiting to be shaped.
