Stephen Koukoulas

Interest rates already are restrictive.

No doubt about that.

Another hike would make them very restrictive.

And just bear in mind, we're only a week away or eight days away from the federal budget.

What we're seeing or likely to see from that is a tightening in fiscal policy.

So if the Treasury Secretary, Jenny Wilkinson, who's on the board of the RBA, says, you know, just whisper quietly, we've actually got a pretty tight budget coming through, so don't over-hike rates when we've got that withdrawal of cash and that NDIS, the cuts that we saw announced a couple of weeks ago, are symptomatic of what's to come.

We're getting close to the end of the rate hiking cycle even if they do go tomorrow afternoon.

Well, the most recent building approvals were really encouraging.

We need to build more houses.

Obviously, the supply side of new dwellings is important for affordability.

And just by the way, that's the GDP.

It creates jobs.

So it's a good thing to be having a house building pickup.

So the numbers had been very, very encouraging.

But I think the point that's being made more broadly

is that these are just building approvals.

They haven't yet sort of got the backhoe digging the foundations or anything like that, let alone building a building.

So we do know that from time to time, the building approvals can be postponed and that's the risk that's happening right now.

Yeah.

Exactly the point.