Stephen Koukoulas

Treasury's got a number in there for the near term of 1% or a little bit more in terms of productivity.

The RBA is at 0.7.

And because of that, because of that, Treasury have got inflation falling back to target a little bit sooner.

Sure, it's going to hit 5%.

We know that's pretty much baked into the CPI for the next few months.

But falling back to 2.5% by the middle of next year.

They've got a lower peak in the unemployment rate.

They've got stronger economic growth.

And it's all about productivity.

Now, one part of me says, obviously, the Reserve Bank Board didn't know what was in the budget, unless Jenny Wilkinson, the Treasury Secretary, sort of gave a few little whispers under the mat or whatever.

But basically, Treasury have used the extra information that they have seen in the budget measures, the various tax changes and things that you mentioned, and produced a set of forecasts that

that are more optimistic than the RBA based on, fundamentally based on a more optimistic beyond productivity.

It'll help.

And productivity is one of these things that's very, very hard to get a handle on and what makes productivity click in a sense.

So a lot of the focus, and it's actually been the focus prior to the budget, prior to last night's budget, but a lot of it is in the codes and the rules and the red tape and regulation about construction activity.

that there's so many magnificent documents, hundreds of pages long, that a builder's got to look at when they're just building a house, for goodness sake.

So they're trying to reduce that red tape to make it a little bit smoother.

And, of course, that increases the speed at which a property's built, lowers the cost of the property, which is productivity.

On some of the other things, they're more –

Look, they're more longer timeframe.