Nick Goodall

Housing in particular isn't exactly much cheaper over there.

So having to get a mortgage,

You know, it might look very similar to what getting a mortgage over here might do.

You know, I'm sure many people saw that the official cash rate lifted in Australia last week.

So, you know, they're already on that upward cycle because they've got a stronger economy, because they're seeing strong growth in prices, because they've seen a lift in inflation.

they're having to fight against that sooner rather than later, whereas we're not quite at that point here in New Zealand.

So I think there are those differences that are worth paying attention to, and that will be of an influence, as you say, not just on fewer New Zealanders going there, but hey, if someone's looking to move to a different country and they're looking at Aussie or New Zealand or similar places,

maybe New Zealand starting to just squeak up on that growth of attractiveness at the back of an improving economy, even if it's a slowly improving economy.

But also I think you're right that, you know, it's not like the numbers are storming away.

We've had some data for January as well, which shows that still reason to be pretty cautious around that shouldn't,

disregard that labour market result you know the little lift in unemployment rate yes I know there was some positivity there with more people actually working but there's still a decent underemployment rate too people still want more work it's still affecting different people in different ways as well in terms of different age groups and different parts of society too so I don't think it's all great positive perfect news but certainly it's better than it otherwise could be and you've got to be happy to see a positive figure and and that's what that

let's go back to that New Zealand Activity Index, the indication it likely has for GDP, and that, as you said, what do they call it, Kiwi GDP, the Reserve Bank's now cast of where they see all the data they've got today, where they think GDP would land, and it's a similar result.

So, yeah, I think there's good reason to think that GDP result will be positive when it comes through.

Not quite as strong as Q3, but that was a big make-up on Q2, so there's always a bit of volatility here as well.

So I think that has to lead us to more positive than negative

more optimistic than pessimistic, but there's still all those reasons to just hold that confidence down a little bit and be a little bit cautious with this.

So then, what's it going to mean for Anna Bremen and her first monetary policy statement?

But of course, it's a committee decision on Wednesday.

I think we can pretty much lock in a hold, right?

So as per usual, our eyes are going to turn straight to their forecasts and our ears are going to be very dialed in to the language