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<\/p>\nWith so many terrible stories in the news at the moment, do you want to hear a light-hearted tale?<\/p>\n
It involves the Canberra press gallery.<\/p>\n
At this time of year, in the weeks leading up to a federal budget, we always see speculation in the media about what “may” be in the budget.<\/p>\n
But in 1954, a journalist in Canberra secured a pre-budget leak that was so detailed and comprehensive that his editors did not quite believe it, and they downplayed it in their own newspaper.<\/p>\n
Canberra’s whispering gallery<\/p>\n
The journalist was the late Hal Myers. He was the then-political correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald.<\/p>\n
The story comes from his book, The Whispering Gallery (1999), which gives a wonderful account of Canberra’s political scene in the 1950s during a fascinating period of post-war Australian history.<\/p>\n
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Hal Myers’ book, The Whispering Gallery, was published in 1999. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
In the book, Myers writes about the usual pre-budget speculation that occurs in the media every year (it was already a well-established tradition 70 years ago).<\/p>\n
And he said in the early 1950s, one influential press gallery journalist at a rival newspaper seemed to particularly enjoy the freedom of writing speculative stories about possible budget policies, in the lead-up to budget day.<\/p>\n
“This was an activity that gave Ken Schapel<\/a> something to write about for weeks every year. And as it was only speculation, it didn’t matter, really, whether it was right or wrong,” Myers writes.<\/p>\n “Things expected to happen didn’t happen, that was all. No-one could prove that they had not been considered, or that there hadn’t been a change of mind.”<\/p>\n He says as budget day approached in 1954, Schapel’s big story that year was that the Menzies government would be introducing a 40 per cent initial depreciation allowance to encourage industry to invest in new plants.<\/p>\n “[Ben] Chifley had brought in such an allowance but the Menzies government had abolished it when the economy turned bad at the beginning of the ’50s,” he writes.<\/p>\n “Now that the economy was recovering there was much speculation that it would be restored, and the Telegraph was running a campaign in support of it.<\/p>\n “Frank Packer, the Telegraph’s proprietor, must have had major investment plans. And, like other self-interested campaigns of his, this one had nothing subtle about it.<\/p>\n “Schapel’s stories may have seemed to provide support for his employer’s campaign.”<\/p>\n And that’s the background for what happened next.<\/p>\n Want to know what’s in the budget?<\/p>\n According to Myers, at a reception in the members’ dining room of Old Parliament House, Myers bumped into treasurer Arthur Fadden.<\/p>\n Arthur Fadden served as federal treasurer from 1940 to 1941 and 1949 to 1958. (Supplied:\u00a0National Archives of Australia)<\/p>\n He says Fadden told him, “You don’t want to take any notice of those stories the Crow is writing about an initial depreciation allowance. There won’t be any. It isn’t in the budget.”<\/p>\n And Fadden did not stop there.<\/p>\n Fadden then told Myers the 10 main points in the upcoming budget, which was an outline of the whole thing.<\/p>\n Why would he do that? Myers assumed that Fadden was so annoyed by Frank Packer’s pressure campaign to deliver an initial depreciation allowance that he “lost all patience.”<\/p>\n “An exclusive story on a budget was the biggest scoop of all in Canberra, for it was the hardest to get,” Myers writes.<\/p>\n “[It] was only occasionally, in my experience, that a journalist might get a genuine story on a single important point in a budget.<\/p>\n “Now, here I was with the lot. And I had got it direct from the treasurer at a function at which any politician or pressman in Canberra could have seen him talking to me in a corner.”<\/p>\n Myers rang his editor the next day and told him that he had the front-page lead for the following day’s paper.<\/p>\n “I’m writing a budget story today. It’s the whole story. I have it from an unquestionable source, so you can have complete confidence in it. Every word will be right,” he told his editor.<\/p>\n After filing his story, he went home that night knowing that he had scored “one of the best Canberra scoops for years”.<\/p>\n We don’t quite believe it, sorry<\/p>\n But the next morning, Myers says he could not believe what he saw in his paper.<\/p>\n “The story was there, but it wasn’t the front-page lead. It wasn’t even the second story on page one,” he says.<\/p>\n “You had to go down to the third story, under the picture, to find what the Herald had done with it.”<\/p>\n See the story below, as it was published (bordered in red).<\/p>\n A budget leak that was too good to be believed. (Sydney Morning Herald, Friday, August 6, 1954, page 1.)<\/p>\n Myers says his disappointment and anger were mixed with bewilderment because he did not understand what had happened.<\/p>\n And the answer, when he got it, was unimaginable.<\/p>\n “My budget story had been too good,” he writes.<\/p>\n “It was such an important story that Lou [his editor] had shown it to Angus McLachlan, who had shown it to Rupert Henderson, who didn’t believe that the depreciation allowance could have been rejected.”<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1d20c057781b111957014ef30f42c570.jpeg\")
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