Alan Kohler

So the budget from the government obviously was largely about the redistribution of tax and wealth in the name of intergenerational fairness.

The opposition in its budget applies talking about immigration and number of people versus number of houses.

So do you think the fundamental problem is tax and wealth distribution or is it the build and supply number of people issue?

Right, so let's just go through the policy announcements one at a time, if that's okay.

The reversion of capital gains tax back to a CPI adjustment after 26 years of a 50% discount instead.

Will that result, do you think, in less demand and fewer houses or will it be both?

I mean, because a lot of people are saying, oh, well, it'll actually lead to fewer houses and rents will go up.

And what about limiting negative gearing to new houses?

Is that a good idea?

A lot of people are suggesting that the problem, that both of those things, those changes will limit people's ability to save for a deposit to buy a house because of what they're doing is rent vesting.

They're renting in one house and then buying another house as an investment.

Is that a concern for you?

What do you think of the coalition's plan to limit immigration to housing, to number of houses being built?

Is that a feasible idea?

One of the things about your State of the Housing Market report that comes out, the most recent one, is that you talk about net new dwellings rather than housing completions because obviously, and I've been forgetting that myself, I tend to look at housing completions

But forget about demolitions.

And according to your data, there's about 24,000, 25,000 demolitions per year.

So if you look at net housing, the housing accord period of five years from middle of 2024 to 29, what's the council's prediction of the number of net new dwellings that will be built over that period?

So you're saying that net dwellings over the five years of the accord period is 862,000.

Well, that's a long way short of the 1.2 million target, but we don't know, I suppose, whether the 1.2 million target is net or gross, do we?