POV: you’re Jim Chalmers using social media to sell the most ambitious budget of your life

He’s up before sunrise, pounding the pavement in a cap and running shorts. He’s still up late into the night, having slipped into a comfortable sweater while he checks figures in a darkened office by lamplight, fuelled by sugar-free Red Bull.

It’s “decision week”, Jim Chalmers declares of the annual federal budget in a video that pinged around political group chats this week. The treasurer was keen to take people behind the scenes on social media.

Budget week is the biggest political week of the year, and it’s not unusual for treasurers to enjoy the limelight. With months of hard work culminating in what can often be a make-or-break moment for governments, the pressure is high, and the main man behind it all is keen to sell the final product and himself, like those before him.

There was Josh Frydenberg running for the cameras (and the photos of his mulleted tennis playing days made public around 2019’s budget), and the famously awkward photo of Joe Hockey appearing to be consoled by Tony Abbott in a staged photo ahead of their 2015 budget. The pre-budget photo ops are a time-honoured tradition in Canberra.

Chalmers has embraced social media. Press conferences and meetings are filmed, footage edited and slowed down for dramatic effect, creative camera shots and quick cuts making for some urgent, pulsing looks at what the treasurer has been up to.

Chalmers’ budget week posts spanned all manner of social media trends: running content, unboxing videos, casual chats to the camera while making coffee, and edited clips following him through the day.

Everyone in Canberra is a content creator these days. With all parties now fighting to win over voters online as well as the real world, it’s commonplace to see politicians filming TikToks in parliament’s courtyards, arriving for public appearances wearing large Rode microphones on their lapels, or holding media conferences with their own videographers standing among the television cameras. Labor and Liberal MPs have been posting “I read the budget so you don’t have to” content; even veteran minister Don Farrell is posting “POV: walking into budget day” clips while trudging stiffly across a courtyard.

Chalmers has been posting his behind-the-scenes content for a little while now, his own team at press conferences taking reversal pictures of cameras and long, lingering shots of journalists listening intently.

The budget sell is no different. “POV: first budget copy unboxed”, read a caption on one Chalmers video, as a staffer excitedly burst into his office to hand him a paper version of his work. “Perfect early start to the morning with a run down to Treasury”, read another, on a blurry action shot of Chalmers in workout gear, clocking up the miles in the Canberra pre-dawn gloom. Elsewhere, the treasurer is talking to viewers while plopping a Nespresso pod into the coffee machine, or catching up with a group of young people for another caffeine hit.

The federal budget, a dense economic document of many hundreds of pages, is a tough sell for the average punter. Flow charts, complex maths and accounting sheets aren’t big clickers. It’s not hard to see why you’d want to give viewers an easier point of entry. We’re told a part two of Chalmers’ “decision day” video is coming soon.

Chalmers gave access to his budget lockup to another clutch of social media content creators and influencers this week, with popular pages like Cheek Media, Tash Invests and the ‘Money Money Money’ podcast given an early look at the papers, and opportunities to interview key ministers. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, gave an interview with the commentary page Toilet Paper Australia, while other pages threw questions at Chalmers during the day.

The information war is real, and the weapon is volume of content across as many streams as possible. Politicians still care about the traditional media coverage, with the budget lockup, press conference and subsequent media blitz still a critical part of the strategy. But winning over social media feeds and online platforms, where more people are spending more of their lives, reaching disconnected voters who don’t read the news or are more influenced by relatable content than a week of favourable newspaper headlines, is the challenge for modern politicians.

Some politicians feel silly doing this stuff. You can instantly tell the ones who are enthusiastic when the tripod and ring light come out, or the ones who have clearly been grudgingly dragged over the line by their young staffer. But in a time when voters are tuning out politicians and the news, while placing a premium on authenticity, letting them see a different side of elected leaders can be a powerful tool.

Take, for instance, David Pocock’s wildly popular public campaign for a gas tax: it’s a niche and complicated area of policy, but go to any of Albanese or Chalmers’ comments sections lately, and the responses are flooded with calls to change the tax. Pocock, a plain-talking political outsider, won over a large section of the public with his push, alongside commentary page Punters Politics.

“lol tax the freaking gas,” reads a top comment on Albanese’s latest Instagram post. Eight of the top 10 comments are about gas.

With politicians on the nose, populism on the march and dissatisfaction rife, Albanese and Chalmers have both admitted bluntly that the budget’s major changes are – in part – about showing voters they don’t accept the status quo and trying to respond to concerns about a broken system. Authenticity, a main word One Nation supporters use to praise Pauline Hanson, is key.

Posting a few coffee selfies and running videos won’t fix that overnight. But, in this day and age, it may be more palatable to punters than trying to explain the budget with a lot of dense charts and spreadsheets.