To be clear, moving the Titles Registry out of government, into another company, which has a price tag, but is not for sale, and is mainly just an accounting technique to take pressure off the budget, was expected.

And insofar as it saves taxpayers money, this accounting technique would no doubt be welcomed by the Queenslanders who understand it. It is, after all, the brainchild of a Labor government elected in a backlash against Liberal National Party cuts, and which has now, in a pandemic, vowed to avoid austerity measures at all cost.

But the new valuation of the registry, unveiled today, was totally unexpected, and so much harder to explain. Treasurer Cameron Dick knew it would come as a shock, so he dedicated 22 paragraphs of his budget speech to it, listing by name the agencies that signed off on the notional price.

And the Labor MPs in the Legislative Assembly cried “Hear! Hear!” (More money is welcome, especially when it doesn’t come from tax hikes, efficiency measures and redundancies).

Outside of the chamber, Dick faced questions, and essentially argued that no one was losing out so it wasn’t a problem. If the money could be shown to exist then shouldn’t it benefit Queenslanders?

Journalists, some not known for their command of English let alone maths, were still puzzled. How can you suddenly reap an extra $3.8 billion from an asset that was previously little more than a footnote in the official budget papers?

The Treasurer looked for parallels, albeit re-explaining the accounting technique rather than the valuation processes. He looked near and far.

“This is exactly the same approach that the New South Wales Generation Fund takes and the Quebec Generations Fund takes,” Dick said.

“This is not new, it is new for Queensland.”

Queensland is a long way from Quebec. But anyone sitting up with a pile of old budget papers, and today’s material in front of them, would be forgiven for thinking Dick had written it all in French. It’s as if the Treasurer wanted to snap freeze the economic recovery, and take the opportunity to cast Queensland’s future performance in a completely different light. One that delivers a surplus at the next election. One in which the details are so complex the commentary has to stand out.

The government’s fiscal principles have been rewritten in this budget, but good luck trying to measure performance based on previous years. Government borrowings are shown in a different light – debt means different things, depending who you ask – and so too are the infrastructure projects they are now meant to fund. For example, you cannot compare capital expenditure on social housing, because how the budget papers are written and set out has changed too much. Last year, it was clearly defined, but that was an anomaly. Now you just have to take their word for it.

Similarly, all the headline funds with big dollar figures deliver much less than that day-to-day, and it is always difficult to ascertain what is new, or additional, funding. Expenditure fluctuates, and the new principles only require growth to be less than revenue growth. Good thing that last year, expenditure growth was set to run at 1.6 per cent on average over four years, but now it is 2.3 per cent. More room to move, especially if and when the revenue improves.

The principles also want Queensland to maintain its tax competitiveness with other states, yet the latest tax competitiveness chart – a budget mainstay – relies on 2019-20 figures. Even the last budget did better than that, and some of the material released today referenced more recent data, so it’s not as if it wasn’t available. Maybe it just looks better. Maybe that’s the theme of the 2021-22 budget.

Overall, Dick is happy with the budget, which Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk insists ticks all the Labor boxes. They say Queensland will emerge from the pandemic stronger than other jurisdictions.

There’s only one way to respond to that: “Sacré bleu!”