Anthony Miller

address that challenge that they're seeing in their supply chains, what they're seeing in their cost inputs.

And so, you know, I think it's a question of time.

And it's also a question of just actually how quickly will the supply chain restore itself such that we get some normalisation in at least supplies and then, of course, normalisation in prices that they're up.

Absolutely, and what we're focused on now is that we've got the capital position of the bank at the highest it's ever been, higher than our peers at this point in time, got the balance sheet in the place that means we can and are very committed to saying to customers, if you need help, if you need additional liquidity, if you need additional time to solve challenges that you have, we're there for you because that's what we need to do if we want to be the bank we want to be for our customers.

And so therefore all the work we're doing now is what are the actions we can take

What are the engagement we can have with all of our customers, particularly small business, medium size and larger enterprises in terms of saying, what do you need?

Here's what we can do.

Call us if you need any help in terms of getting through this challenge that we see for at least the next three to six months.

Well, we've got a balance sheet that gives us the capacity to support and be far more willing to...

provide additional liquidity to businesses that are having some working capital challenges, for example, to be much more patient in when and how they might repay their loan because the circumstances have changed.

And so it's all about how do we use the strength of our position today to support the customer and get through the next three to six, and it could be longer, months that are needed to get to a somewhat normalised position.

But it all depends, Alan, on whether

this war does stop and how quickly it does stop and then obviously how quickly people can get back to situation normal.

I think there's two elements to the word Unite.

You're right, absolutely one of those reasons is to consolidate everything.

The other is that, you know, let's get behind this and so it's about how we galvanise the workforce.

But simply what Unite is doing is that the bank today as a group currently has three different banking systems.

Westpac St George and versions of Bank SA, Bank of Melbourne and other bits of system.

What we're very focused on is getting everything done one way, following one policy, one process, and identified and put onto one target system.

Okay, and so therefore it's about one way of doing things and that at last years at least gives us the benefit of the market share we have because currently today we have a 20% market share in mortgages, but it's split across three different banking systems.