Late on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden was preparing to address a joint session of Congress, Supreme Court justices and dignitaries including specially invited guests as narrative devices.The annual State of the Union address has no serious equal in our young republic; the President’s Speech - the reincarnated Throne Speech - warms over the administration’s manifesto. It rarely makes a full pronouncement on the state of the government at the point of delivery.Over the years, we have had occasional report cards and propagandist paraphernalia trucked out in election campaigns but never a formal accounting to Parliament on the performance of the government. Budget speeches, once important set pieces in the fiscal calendar, have been relegated to the status of occasional footnotes since the introduction of value added tax.
