I confess. I have stopped watching the live Budget presentation.
Not because I have lost interest in the country's finances. Quite the opposite. I have probably become more interested in what lies behind the numbers. But after years of watching Budget Day unfold, I have discovered a more efficient way of doing it: read the newspaper the next morning.
By then, the numbers have been digested, the important announcements separated from the decorative language, and someone has usually produced a useful table telling me what the Budget actually means for my pocket.
The Government's version will have been delivered. The coalition MPs will have praised it. The Opposition will have criticised it. Somewhere in between, someone will have discovered a number that appears to have been overlooked, misrepresented or interpreted differently.
And then comes the familiar political choreography.
Budget 2027 will be tabled by Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Friday, October 9, with the policy debate beginning on Monday, October 12. The parliamentary calendar allows eight sitting days for the policy debate, followed by four days of ministerial replies and a much longer committee-stage examination.
On paper, this is serious parliamentary scrutiny. In practice, the public experience can be rather different.
The Budget speech is inevitably packed with numbers, programmes and aspirations. The Government has already signalled that Budget 2027 will focus on raising the economic ceiling, raising the living-standard floor and driving governance reform. It also comes against the backdrop of an energy shock and continued cost-of-living pressures.
But what will most people remember?
- Probably the price of petrol.
- How much subsidy?
- Who qualifies?
- How much cash assistance?
- What happens to taxes?
- What do civil servants receive?
- What happens to housing?
- What becomes more expensive?
These are legitimate questions. Indeed, they are the questions people should ask. The problem is that they can crowd out the less glamorous questions that ultimately determine whether a Budget is sound.
- What is happening to the fiscal deficit?
- How much is being spent on operating expenditure compared with development expenditure?
- How much is being consumed by debt service?
- What is the medium-term fiscal trajectory?
- Are development allocations producing measurable economic returns?
- What happened to last year's allocation?
These subjects rarely make the front page. "Debt-service dynamics remain broadly manageable" is unlikely to compete successfully with "Petrol subsidy retained at RM1.99".
And then comes Parliament.
This is where I sometimes yearn for the Canadian parliamentary debates I have followed. They can be refreshingly concise and factual—less theatre, more interrogation. An MP asks a question. The minister answers. Another MP challenges the answer. Numbers are produced. The argument moves on.
Our Budget debates can sometimes feel more like a political family gathering in which everybody has prepared a speech but nobody has prepared to listen.
Government MPs understandably defend the Budget. Opposition MPs understandably attack it. That is what parliamentary politics is supposed to do. But somewhere between "rakyat terbeban" and "fiscal responsibility", between praise and rebuttal, the actual economics can disappear.
There is also a predictable media cycle. The media is not entirely to blame. It is responding to what audiences consume. A dispute over fuel eligibility makes a good headline. A minister's sharp retort makes an excellent video clip.
A new cash handout can be explained in one graphic. Explaining the difference between operating expenditure and development expenditure requires considerably more ink—and possibly a cup of coffee.
The result is that Parliament produces a vast amount of information, while journalism performs the increasingly important job of deciding what information ordinary people should care about.
By Saturday, the Budget has been summarised. By Sunday, economists, business groups and commentators have started dissecting it. By Monday, the analysis is usually more refined than what one heard on Budget Day itself.
This year, there is another complication. Melaka's state assembly has already been dissolved, paving the way for the 16th state election. The Budget will therefore arrive in an atmosphere in which political parties are already positioning themselves and reading every announcement for its political as well as economic consequences.
That makes restraint in parliamentary debate even more valuable. The public does not need another campaign speech disguised as Budget scrutiny. It needs MPs to ask the questions that may not fit comfortably into a campaign slogan.
- What are we buying with the next ringgit?
- What are we getting for the previous one?
- What happens if oil stays high?
- What happens if growth slows?
- Where does the money come from?
- And, perhaps most importantly, what is the plan beyond 2027?
The Government has itself promised that every ringgit should deliver better value and has placed fiscal reform, targeted subsidies, energy security and a higher-value economy among the priorities for Budget 2027.
Those are ambitious objectives. Parliament should therefore give us an ambitious debate. Otherwise, many of us will do what I have increasingly done over the years.
Skip the live broadcast.
Have dinner.
Read tomorrow's newspaper.
And wait for someone to explain what the Budget actually means.
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