Rich Harvey

Thanks very much, Craig.

Yeah, I had a great break.

And actually, all my team said, Rich, you're looking really relaxed and refreshed.

I went, yep, you betcha, ready for the last quarter of the year.

So I had a great trip away.

Craig, it was actually quite severe.

It had a massive impact on Australia's migration.

Not only did Australia lock down, but the world did as well.

And that impacted our population significantly.

You know, over the last decade, 60% of our population growth has come through migration and the rest of the population growth has come through natural increase.

So migration is the fundamental means by which Australia grows.

And with its closed borders, that suddenly came to a halt.

And if you look back between 2020

and 2021, we actually had more people leaving our shores than arriving here.

So we actually had a period of what we called net overseas migration decline.

And the only other time in history that has happened was during World War I and World War II.

Yeah, if we look at the stats, Craig, in 2019, we gained 247,620 people through my net overseas migration.

But from April 2020, I mean, remember COVID hit in sort of March 2020.

So from April 2020 to the end of 2021, migration was basically zero.

The short term migration numbers were around half a million less than they otherwise would have been.