THERE is no mystery to the Budget anymore.

Gone are the days when the Budget revealed all and journalists would emerge from the lock-up primed to file the stories as soon as the Treasurer had delivered the Budget to the parliament.

These days, carefully orchestrated leaks ensure the good news is drip-fed for weeks so the government’s profile of achievements is prepared before the Treasurer rises in the Assembly.

It is more challenging for oppositions. There is no good news to sell. Building a profile that in any way compares to those who hold the purse strings is nigh-on impossible.

Even before the Budget was released, Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson has been doing his best explaining the problems for the ACT declaring: “The ACT Labor government is on track to deliver the worst ever result for the territory Budget with the mid-year review predicting a $770 million deficit. The Budget position worsened mid-year by $53 million even without accounting for the costs of the Mr Fluffy buyback and demolition scheme”.

In the meantime, Chief Minister Andrew Barr was making a series of positive announcements standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his ministers.

The bicycle network will be improved yet again along with other cycling infrastructure (how much green paint can we get on Canberra’s roads?) and Canberra Theatre is in line for upgrades. This offers something for cyclists and performing art lovers, and sometimes the spoils overlap, which delivers a double political whammy. All great politics.

Also great politics is the government promise to “spruce up our suburbs with more mowing, cleaning, weeding and other maintenance”. It engages everyone.

There were many others the government was trying to win over pre-Budget before the Opposition could really get traction in explaining why the government is over-spending. However, in Barr’s first Budget as chief minister he cannot be seen to be too harsh on any sector of the community.

Meanwhile Hanson stays on message. The success of the Canberra Liberals’ last election campaign continues as he argues “rates are on their way to tripling, fees and charges continue to increase, but the ACT Budget position is getting worse”.

And he sticks to what he believes is Labor’s Achilles heel: “The problem is that ACT Labor is spending money on its pet projects, like light rail.

“Unfortunately the ACT Labor government is more concerned with light rail as well as wind and solar farms than creating an affordable city for Canberrans.

“Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on light rail is not the way to go”.

Suddenly the environmental aspects of the Labor government have been lumped in with the light rail.

Hanson also likes to have a positive message, thanks to his federal colleagues: “Comparatively, the measures announced in this month’s federal Budget will lend a hand to ACT small businesses, which have been struggling to deal with excessive costs and red tape under Andrew Barr. The instant asset write down and reduced company tax rate will make a difference”.

But Labor’s good news just kept coming; further ambulances to be stationed in Tuggeranong, which will please those from that part of the city who have for so long felt that they were being ignored.

The ACT Government will also open new public hospital beds as part of a funding boost to improve hospital capacity.

And for those with a social conscience, Andrew Barr tweeted: “The @actgovernment will provide the Legal Aid Commission with additional funding to improve access to justice for the most disadvantaged”.

Budgets are fundamentally about ideology. Where, when and how community money should be spent and how much and from whom it should be collected are the basics of setting our standards of living and creating the city that we are.

The contest of ideologies still drives the needs for maximum exposure as it plays out in the broad political arena, in the Assembly, in the mainstream and social media, in cafés, in pubs and around the kitchen table.