If the Treasurer and Premier are forced to wear the boring badge for this budget, writes Mike Smithson, it means they’ll have more to splash when campaigning for the March election hits top gear.

Treasurers can get a bit tetchy on state budget day, having just poured their hearts and souls into keeping the books balanced, when few people really care.

With that in mind, Stephen Mullighan’s response was predictable when I asked him about the complete absence of ambulance ramping in his lengthy media presentation in front of dozens of journalists, advisors and treasury officials.

“I don’t think that’s fair,” he quipped.

“We do mention ramping. It just shows me you haven’t read the budget speech,” he added.

He was 100 per cent correct, and it was a response he’d clearly prepared in advance for the anticipated obvious question.

In his nine-page, hour-long Appropriation Bill speech to parliament, ramping was mentioned once early on page one.

It was amongst one of eight volumes each containing about 200 pages handed to journalists in the annual budget lock up.

May figures, released after budget day, show ramping hours at emergency departments were 4791 hours, which is the third-worst month on record.

The point I was trying to make was his apparent smoke and mirrors avoidance of the word in the lock up, preferring to talk about the smiling faces........

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