James Thomson

We'll at least do one more, according to the market, maybe two.

And what we're looking at, Nicole says, is a drop in prices of between 5% and 10%.

Put that in context, Anthony.

Median house price in the last five years?

Yeah.

It's up 53%.

Yeah, okay.

So we can take a drop of 5% to 10%.

In fact, that's what the government is trying to engineer here, if they were brutally honest.

But I think this is still a pretty big moment.

Nicol's right.

It's the biggest housing correction in 40 years.

This is the end of what Morgan Stanley calls the 30-year housing super cycle, which has been built on tax breaks that the budget is attacking, and it's been built on cheap credit.

That era appears to be gone.

Inflation's sticky.

Interest rates are going to remain high.

So this is a big change for Australia, I think.

House prices are a national obsession, and you can understand that this change is just starting to filter through the market, I think.

Anthony, I went to a big business function on Monday night and there was real frustration still about the budget there.

Did you sense the same at the AFR's Director Awards this week?