Alan Kohler

They've calculated that.

But it's much more than simply that.

This has to change the way we think about housing.

But I actually think that the only way to stop people thinking of housing as an investment asset and the best investment asset is for it to not be a good investment over a long time, like it'll take 10 years.

As long as it's not a good investment for 10 years, then we'll stop thinking about it like that.

When I first started going to budget lockups 46 years ago, he says coughing, the bloke who was my sort of boss and mentor at the time, Bob Gutliebsen, he taught me how to do it.

This is what you do when you go into a budget lockup.

You read the speech first.

Then you read the Treasury's economic outlook and then you write your piece from the speech and the economic outlook.

But over the years I've changed that.

I actually don't even read the speech now in the lock-up.

If I go to the lock-up I don't bother reading the speech.

I think it's just guff.

It's not worth reading.

And I don't really read Treasury's economic outlook either because

So what I do is I look for the, firstly, I go to table 3.3.

Let me just look it up.

Table 3.3, which is the

Reconciliation of General Government Sector Underlying Cash Balance Estimates.

And that tells you, that adds up the policy decisions and what they call parameter and other variations, which is the windfall gains or losses, you know, the things that are outside their control.