It reflects poorly on this city that, when a consultant to government speaks plainly and criticises openly, it's a genuine surprise. Too often, the reports in this marketplace - especially those for public consumption - are anodyne and timid, as analysts worry as much about diplomacy and winning future contracts as they do about telling the truth.
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The Pegasus Economics report handed to the ACT Legislative Assembly's estimates committee last week was refreshing in this regard. Each year, the committee hires a specialist adviser to help it review the budget. The four Pegasus authors didn't hold back:
"There is a new and overtly political tone in this year's main ACT budget paper ... that has not been apparent in past ACT budget papers that strikes a shrill tone," they wrote. "It appears rather incongruous for the ACT government to be both disparaging as well as demanding greater engagement on the part of the Commonwealth government. The political commentary in Budget Paper No.3 is unbecoming for a small jurisdiction that wants to be taken seriously."
The team did the rest of their job, too, identifying 16 areas (mostly ACT Treasury assumptions) that the committee should scrutinise closely on behalf of Canberrans; small issues, such as traffic fines revenue, and larger, such as unforeseen costs of the Mr Fluffy demolitions and unusually optimistic population growth forecasts.
When Chief Minister Andrew Barr was asked whether the criticism of his budget's tone was valid, he replied: "I don't believe so. The same could be said about Pegasus' commentary on this matter."
There may be truth on both sides.
Budget papers are crucial documents. They anchor most of what the government does, and are the foundation of government transparency. But it would be wrong to assume that they are apolitical. Political language colours all budget papers issued by all governments.
Nonetheless, this year's Budget Paper No.3 - the usually dry, straight-forward volume with the details - lapsed regularly into rhetoric. Phrasing such as "the Coalition's disregard for Canberra" belongs in speeches, not Treasury papers, as do sentences such as: "So just as we did five years ago in the face of Tony Abbott's cuts and the Mr Fluffy crisis, we will step up and invest in Canberra."
Political language colours all budget papers issued by all governments.
Yet, as odd as that language may seem in a budget paper, it is also true. Objectively, recent federal Coalition policies have harmed the ACT economy. The ACT's share of federal infrastructure funding in recent years is relatively tiny. Decimating the Australian Public Service has disproportionately affected this city, even if some of the lost economic activity was offset by an increase in private sector firms doing government work.
Perhaps the "Coalition's disregard for Canberra" is expressed most clearly in its decentralisation agenda, which, given the lack of transparency surrounding the policy, appears to be a means of shifting jobs from a city built for government administration to marginal, Nationals-held electorates, regardless of how the people doing those jobs feel about it.
For a range of reasons, the Liberal and National parties are changing their approach to the public service. The APS was once a political non-issue. But Coalition attacks on it have led to Labor defending it, meaning the public service itself has become, involuntarily, a partisan battleground.
All of this represents an existential threat to Canberra, even though the city's economy has diversified in recent decades. It would be deceptive to deliver a budget that did not canvas the vulnerabilities that Coalition policies represent.
Yet it's also possible to do so without the soapbox, Mr Barr. Everything has its place.
