Ian Verrinder

One of the things that we're proudest of.

Who would have guessed that we'd be in this situation?

I mean, we were expecting a much stronger economy with inflation under control and sort of this was going to be full steam ahead for this year, you know, having come through that inflation bout that we had after the Ukraine war.

Well, the Treasury expects that we'll see inflation peak at around about 5% this year and then magically drop back to 2.5% for the next, what, three or four years.

Oh, that sounds all right.

Well, 2.5% is exactly the midpoint between the 2% and 3% band that the Reserve Bank loves and can get interest rates back to a kind of reasonable level.

And the Reserve Bank has similar kinds of forecasts penciled in as well.

I mean, the Reserve Bank's central forecast is very similar to this Treasury forecast, which is that everything resolves itself within the next two months and it's hunky-dory from then on.

But look, at least both America and Iran are negotiating, you know, call it what you might.

Yes.

But they're not at least battling it out at the moment.

So there is a real incentive for US President Donald Trump to try and resolve this, despite all the rhetoric, sooner rather than later.

Yeah.

Look, we've had unemployment at historically low levels for quite some time.

They were in the mid threes for quite a while.

We're now up to above 4%, obviously, and so 4.5%.

It's getting into that traditional territory where we were for many years, where the rate, the natural rate of unemployment or full employment was 5% of the workforce not having a job.

And so, you know, we are heading back towards those kind of levels.

Yeah.

Thank you.