Do you know how your money is being spent? You might want to pay attention

September 23, 2026 — 5:00am

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It should not come as a surprise to know that I – a self-described budget nerd – maintain a spreadsheet of the nation’s treasurers.

Ranking them by length of service, the sheet traverses the 40 men to have held the post, from Gough Whitlam (just 14 days) all the way up to Peter Costello (11 years, 267 days).

(For pedants, I do not count Bob Hawke in the list for the single day he held the job after sacking Paul Keating and appointing John Kerin.)

I also keep records on some of the key messages delivered by treasurers through their annual day in the sun – budget day.

George Turner, the nation’s first treasurer and its 12th-longest serving, noted prophetically the weight on his shoulders, and those in Parliament House in Melbourne in 1901, when he released the first Commonwealth budget.

“I feel that the work on which we shall be engaged for some little time is of the utmost importance to all the people of our Commonwealth – not alone to those who are here now, but to those who will be here when we have passed away,” he said.

Turner spoke like the Victorian (both the era and the colony of which he was twice premier) he was. But his message still stands. A government’s budget is a covenant from current to future generations.

In the lead-up to, and in the days after, much of the political attention on the budget comes to the bottom line. Will the treasurer........

© Brisbane Times