BEN HARVEY: Treasurers are the reason why Government spending isn’t going to slow down anytime soon

Nobody goes into politics to be a backbencher. It’s a gruelling and thankless job.

You are told how to vote.

You are told which Dorothy Dixers to ask in question time.

You are told which functions to attend so party donors feel they are being listened to.

You are told which doors to knock on to get voter feedback.

Agency? Shut up and do as you’re told.

You are usually out the door at 6.30am to attend a business breakfast at which a member of Cabinet is speaking. Your bum is on the seat not because your input is appreciated but so your team is appropriately represented and at least one person laughs when the minister cracks an awful joke.

Most evenings will see you at a function until after 10pm. Occasionally, you might get on stage to deliver a welcome or a vote of thanks, but rarely will that be because of who you are; it’s because you are representing a minister who had a more important event to attend.

When parliament is sitting, you often stay in the chamber simply to make up the numbers as more important MPs are “paired” with Opposition members so they can go out and do some proper work.

In a recess, you are a dog’s body for whatever public policy initiative is being pushed by party strategists. You are given talking points to parrot should a journalist ask for your opinion about that policy.

If you still think there’s some silver lining, think back to how bored you were at your child’s end-of-year concert when the kids who weren’t yours were on stage.

Now imagine going to 30 end-of-year concerts where your kid doesn’t even go to the school.

That’s the life of a backbencher.

Oh, and if you divide your salary by the number of hours you worked, you’ll realise you are better off flipping burgers at McDonald’s.

The one thing that keeps you as a backbencher going is the prospect of being a frontbencher. To that end, you dutifully eat whatever shit sandwich is served and smile while you take each bite.

You suck up to powerbrokers and distance yourself from troublemakers who refuse to toe the party line, or don’t do it with enough enthusiasm.

You try to make a name for yourself with your work on various parliamentary committees and you show your worth by diligently shadowing whomever you have been assigned to as a parliamentary secretary — the political equivalent of serfdom.

You bide your time and cross your fingers at every Cabinet reshuffle. Finally, usually many years after first being elected, you might get a junior portfolio on the front bench.

If you don’t mess up, and keep shimmying up the greasy political pole, you might, just might, be admitted to the inner sanctum of Cabinet.

Eventually, you might get a portfolio that matters. One that can genuinely change lives. That has a big budget and a big staff.

If you’re a Federal MP that could be foreign affairs, defence, resources, energy or environment. If you’re a State or Territory politician it is transport, education or police.

Regardless of the jurisdiction, at the top of the portfolio pile is treasury.

The position of treasurer is the most influential role in any government, often even more so than premier or prime minister.

Your control of the purse strings means you can make or break the careers of your colleagues. With the flick of a red pen, you can kill any policy and free up funding for your pet projects.

After eating that shit sandwich for so many years, shaking so many germ-riddled hands and turning sausages on so many barbecues at so many community events, it’s finally your time to shine.

But what if you become treasurer at a time when economic orthodoxy demands you don’t spend? What if you reach the summit when inflation is out of control and any further stimulus is going to be a fiscal wrecking ball?

Do you do the financially responsible thing and draw closed the purse strings?

Hell, no.

You’ve stepped over many political carcasses on the road to this job and you know how quickly you can go from rooster to feather duster. Who knows whether your electorate will even vote you back in!

So you don’t even consider cooling your heels; you make your mark while you can.

And that basic “I’m here for a good time, not a long time” emotional response by politicians who are in a position of power is the reason this country is going broke.

Victorian Treasurer Jaclyn Symes and WA Treasurer Rita Saffioti this week kept spending because they don’t know how long their time in the sun will last.

Jim Chalmers will do the same next week.

That we are spending too much is a truism.

Standard and Poor’s belled the cat about the financial position of the country’s strongest economy — WA — within an hour of Saffioti handing down her third Budget.

The ratings agency pointed out that the multibillion-dollar budget surpluses she bragged about were illusionary.

They took into account the day-to-day running expenses of schools, hospital and police stations but ignored the cost of building the schools, hospitals and police stations.

Once the total cost of running the Government (that is, building and operating the place) those surpluses shrink and, in some years, turn into deficits.

Even the treasurer with the most money doesn’t have that much money. And yet the spending continues.

It’s not because of politics.

It’s not because of “baked-in” expenditure.

It’s because the people making the decisions want to be remembered in the history books as someone who got stuff done.

And if that means adding to the pile of debt and fuelling inflation, then so be it.